


Lone Crusaders

by knightshade



Category: Knight Rider (1982), The Lone Gunmen (TV)
Genre: AI Sentience, Action/Adventure, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2340986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightshade/pseuds/knightshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on a case in Washington DC, the Foundation becomes the target of a high tech thief and meets a strange group of newspaper men chasing a story about an artificial intelligence housed in a car.  Can they keep Kitt safe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Glen A. Larson and Universal have the Knight Rider clan and I’m pretty sure the Gunmen object to anyone owning them, but Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen, and probably others have a stake. 
> 
> Notes: I found this in a nearly complete state on my hard drive recently, although most of it was probably written 10 years ago. Funny how the last 90 percent of any effort seems to take the most time. The other chapters are done, they just need polishing so they should be available soon.
> 
> And yes, yes, the times don’t line up. I realize that Michael, Kitt, and company inhabit the 80’s and that Frohike, Byers, Langly, and company inhabit the late 90s and aughts. I’m going with Article 13, Subarticle 272, Paragraph 12 of the Artistic License which clearly states that as long as an artist acknowledges her use of artistic license, she’s good. For purposes of putting them in a culturally referential time, let’s say they all live in the late 90s. The LG crew falls in the just-after-meeting-Yves and before figuring-out-if-she’s-friend-or-foe portion of their timeline and the KR crew clearly has a season 3 aesthetic –at least in my mind. Go with me here.

"Hey, pretty,

Don't you want to take a ride with me,

Through my world."

                        - _Hey Pretty,_ Poe

 

**Chapter 1**

 

The hotel bar was crowded but not completely filled. There were still a couple empty tables and several lonely stools around the U-shaped bar. The shiny marble wall and the bar's mirrored surface reflected the light in the room, making it brighter than the typical drinking establishment. Glasses were hung overhead in neat rows and there was a constant, pleasant clinking as the black-and-white-clad bartenders pulled them down to fill orders.

 

Despite the constant din of friendly chatter, and the in-and-out bustle of people, Devon Miles found it easier to work in the bar than his room. In his room there were too many interruptions. The phone was always ringing and there were always old friends and acquaintances knocking so Devon decided to hide in a place few people thought to look for him. Most of the people who had the time for reminiscing had gone out for dinner, making it unlikely that anyone he knew would discover him here.

 

Devon glanced up from his work to sip from the glass of expensive cognac sitting in front of him. It was his second drink and he'd been nursing it for quite a while. He'd bought two glasses of very expensive liquor and had tipped the bartender handsomely so no one had complained about him taking up space.

 

Devon glanced back down at a particularly vexing section in his presentation. He'd been too busy to spend the proper time to polish his speech, and now here he was at the last minute trying to get it done. The trick was to put just the right spin on the Foundation for Law and Government’s involvement in artificial intelligence research. Every year the Foundation attended the International Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Conference in Washington DC, and every year he ended up tiptoeing around just how much to expose.

 

Devon was only dimly aware that someone had come up next to him to place an order. He looked up just in time to see a beautiful young woman with curly black hair spill a glass of red wine all over his presentation.

 

“Oh, excuse me. I’m so sorry,” the woman said apologetically, and Devon was immediately arrested by her accent, as British as his own.

 

Devon quickly located a napkin and began mopping up the red liquid. “It’s quite all right, really.” He smiled as her eyes widened. “It isn’t often that I get spilled on by someone from the old country.”

 

She turned slowly and studied him for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure that is rare.” She held out her hand. “Daryah Lee Selvow. It’s lovely to meet you.”

 

“Devon Miles.” He extended his hand and for the first time took a good look at Daryah. She had alluringly large eyes and delicate features. Her conservative, but elegant red dress stood out in the crowd around the bar. If Devon were any judge of age, he would have guessed her for late twenties or early thirties.

 

“So what brings you to the colonies?” she asked good-naturedly.

 

“I’ve been here quite a while actually. A good friend of mine asked me to help him start a company. And you?”

 

“I love London, but I needed to get out and see a little more of the world. I moved to New York and managed to find a job that requires I travel frequently.” She nodded her head toward the lobby of the hotel. “And I’m finding that Washington DC is quite to my liking.”

 

Devon nodded politely. The bartender brought over more napkins and another glass of wine for Daryah. She looked down at the red stains across Devon’s pages. “I’m terribly sorry about your papers.”

 

“Not to worry, my dear. I prefer to make all my changes on actual paper, but the original is still safe on my computer.”

 

“Anything interesting?" she asked.

 

“Oh, it’s a presentation for IRAIC, the artificial intelligence conference that starts here tomorrow.” Devon was surprised when she took the empty seat next to his.

 

“Artificial intelligence? That sounds like a fascinating field. Are you a scientist?”

 

“Oh no," Devon laughed. "The company I work for does research in that area. I’m afraid I have to leave the real work to the experts.”

 

Daryah smiled and took a sip of her wine.

 

“So what field are you in?” Devon asked.

 

“I’ve been in sales for the last few years. I enjoy the work.”

 

Devon nodded politely as he started to collect his papers. She was a very nice girl, but he really didn't have time for idle chitchat. “It’s been a pleasure talking with you, but I really must have this presentation ready by morning.” Devon glanced up to find Daryah looking him directly in the eye.

 

“Well, I am in sales. If you’d like, maybe I could help you with it. I probably wouldn’t understand much, but it might be fun. We could work on it over a few drinks?”

 

Devon paused, a little shocked at the seductive quality in her voice. He couldn’t help but be flattered by the attention of a beautiful woman, but he knew enough to know this would be a dead end. “I appreciate the offer, Ms. Selvow, but I think I’ll just be putting the final touches on it and calling it a night. It was a pleasure meeting you.” On impulse, Devon took her hand and kissed the back of it before turning to leave the bar - a part of him wishing he were many years younger.

 

‘Daryah’ watched as Miles made his way through the lobby and stopped to wait for the elevator. She sighed and moved the syringe of sodium pentothal from its hiding place in her sleeve to her purse. She briefly entertained the idea of going after him and giving him the drug anyway, but quickly decided against it. She couldn’t risk anyone seeing her inject him. This approach had been a long shot anyway. She'd seen Miles sitting in the bar by himself and had impulsively decided to change her tactics. She needed to find out what that man knew, and any opportunity was worth taking, even if it now meant that she was going to have to use a more indirect approach.

 

The elevator came, and Devon Miles disappeared into it. The woman at the bar finished her glass of wine and grabbed her purse to leave.

 

If the rumors were true, then what that man had was worth its weight in gold.

 

OoOoO

 

Devon dropped the hotel key card on the end table, sat down on the bed, and closed his eyes. He'd had a long day and he didn’t get much sleep the night before. At least the presentation had gone better than expected. With all the practice he'd had as the Foundation's Executive Director, he'd gotten used to public speaking, but he always worried about the questions here. He wouldn't be surprised if one of these times there was someone in the crowd who'd heard of Kitt.

 

Devon picked up the phone and checked his voicemail service. There were the usual litany of messages, most of which he would ignore until they were critical. The last message on his account however, caused him to sit up straight and grab the pen and paper from the nightstand.

 

The feminine voice spoke in an urgent whisper that filled him with dread.

 

“Mr. Miles, my name is Linda Parker and a friend suggested that I contact you for help. I’m an employee with Maricrafters, a small defense contractor in Baltimore and I have important information about a government contract that I need to tell you. I’m going to email you some of that information, but I think my life is in danger and I need your help. Please respond to the email or contact me at 410-555-2112. Please help me. I have nowhere else to turn.”

 

OoOoO

 

“We don’t have a story.” Melvin Frohike hit the delete key and turned away from his computer.

 

“But guys, I’ve been working on that story for weeks,” Jimmy Bond said, his wide eyes matching the forlorn tone in his voice.

 

“Yes, and we told you that if you found proof, if you got even one vet to confirm it or one chip to look suspicious, we’d run it. But you didn’t,” John Byers said as tolerantly as he could. He knew that Frohike was losing all patience with Jimmy and it often fell to him to keep the peace.

 

“But guys, I know the idea of putting microchips in animals in case they get lost is just a trick. The government is using those chipped animals to track people. I’m sure of it.”

 

“You may be right, but we need some evidence to go on. Right now, you don’t have anything and you’ve been researching this for weeks. It’s time to move on.” Byers gently clapped the younger man on the shoulder.

 

Jimmy shook his head and went to sit in the back of their workspace, brooding. Byers shot Frohike a dark look. He hated always having to give Jimmy the bad news, but no one else was diplomatic enough to do it nicely. Frohike shrugged his shoulders, cracked his knuckles under his fingerless gloves, and went back to his computer. His glasses and graying hair reflected the bluish tint from the screen.

 

“Well, you realize this leaves us with a bigger problem,” Ringo Langly said, having stayed out of it until now, intent on his game of Final Fantasy. “We don’t have a story to run. Which means, if we don’t get off our butts this week, next week’s <i> _Lone Gunman </i>_ is going to be pretty thin.”

 

Byers sighed. As the suit-wearing, straight-laced one in the bunch, he often felt responsible for making sure they met their business requirements and a thin edition kept him up at night. “I hate to say this, but has anything interesting come in on the tip line lately?”

 

Langly rolled his eyes and swatted away a section of his long, scraggly hair. “Yeah, cause those people aren’t a bunch of crackpots.” Langly suffered from chronic sarcasm.

 

“They’re our _readers_ , Langly. Besides, it’s a place to start, if nothing else,” Byers said.

 

Langly sighed and quit his game. He called up the list of emails from people who submitted suggestions. “'JFK was an alien,' 'the CIA is really working for the Chinese,' 'Lincoln is being channeled through my dog.' Maybe we should contact the person who sent in that last one and see if their dog is chipped.”

 

Jimmy harrumphed from his spot in the corner.

 

“Oh, wait. Here’s an interesting one. ‘Government has artificial intelligence.’ And the email is from an anonymous source.”

 

“Can you trace it?” Frohike asked, rolling his chair across the floor to get a better look at Langly’s computer screen.

 

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?’ Langly’s head was bobbing up and down as he glanced between his keyboard and screen. “I might be able to get it with time, but it’s pretty well encrypted. And it’s been bounced off half a dozen servers.”

 

Langly clicked on the subject to display the entire message.

 

_The government has developed a true artificial intelligence and is using it to spy on everyday citizens. The AI is being housed in a car owned by the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG) - a shadowy, quasi-legal group that appears to have ties to the Department of Defense and several other government agencies. The eventual goal of the program is to create the ultimate warrior -- an intelligent computer that can operate a tank, submarine, or aircraft and kill without thought or conscience. The Foundation for Law and Government will be attending the International Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Conference (IRAIC) in Washington DC. They never present the true extent of their work, but they are in attendance and could have the vehicle with them._

“That's ridiculous,” Langly scoffed.

 

“Are you sure?” Byers peered over Langly's shoulder studying the email. “I mean, just because we haven’t heard of an AI doesn't mean it hasn't been created. You know there’s plenty of research going on in the field.”

 

“And you'd expect the Defense Department to try to turn it into a weapon,” Frohike said.

 

“But no one’s even close to real AI. It’s tens of years out,” Langly protested. “And why didn’t whoever sent this at least identify who they are or how they came by this info. I don’t like it.”

 

“Maybe they're in a sensitive position. I think its all the more reason to think there’s a real story here. It’s at least something to look into and we don’t have many other options at the moment,” Byers said. He sat down at his computer and pulled up a browser. “That conference just started yesterday and it looks like it’s open to last minute registrations."

 

Frohike looked at Byers before slowly nodding his head. “Alright. Langly, see what you can find out about this Foundation for Law and Government. The rest of us will go see what we can find out at that conference.”

 

Byers and Frohike reached the door that led out to the alleyway before realizing that Jimmy wasn’t following them. They looked at each other and Byers shrugged.

 

“Jimmy, let’s go,” Byers said.

 

“I’m not going. I want to work on my story some more,” Jimmy said sullenly.

 

“Jimmy, you’re story isn’t going anywhere at the moment. Why don’t you put it aside for the time being and go back to it when you have another lead. We need your help on this one. It’s probably going to take all of us.”

 

Jimmy didn’t say anything.

 

Byers sighed. “Okay, how about this. Would you rather come with us or stay here with Langly.”

 

Jimmy looked at the grumpy hacker and then grudgingly grabbed his jacket off a nearby rack.

 

OoOoO

 

Byers, Frohike, and Jimmy had been milling around the IRAIC for a day and a half with nothing to show for it. They had followed the head of the Foundation, Devon Miles, to several panels and presentations but he hadn’t said or done anything suspicious.   And from everything being openly discussed at the conference, Langly was right. The field of AI had years to go before anyone was even close to a truly thinking and reasoning machine.

 

“This is amazing,” Jimmy gushed, as they passed a booth displaying several small robotic arms. “All these numbers and formulas. And these guys really understand it all! I think it would be swell if they created a real AI.”

 

“I don’t know, Jimmy. It seems to me that if someone did create a truly sentient computer, we’d just treat it horribly anyway. If we had machines that truly thought and even had feelings like human beings, imagine the pain we could cause them. We have a bad history with humans we consider inferior or different.”

 

Jimmy shrugged but his eyes were alight as he craned his head to look at the exhibits.

 

Byers, Frohike, and Jimmy entered the main convention space and walked through another set of booths. Everywhere they looked companies and universities had banners and tables set up advertising published research or graduate programs in artificial intelligence. They continued on into the adjacent meeting room, which was set up for the last set of presentations for the day. The room was dimmed, with only about half of the track lighting illuminated. There was a screen with a laptop projector giving the list of the day’s presenters and their topics. Frohike spotted Devon Miles sitting in the fourth row of chairs. He led the guys to a set of empty seats toward the back where they could keep an eye on him. Not that the man had done much, but they were still hoping to get lucky.

 

Byers leaned over to Frohike. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think this is a wild goose chase. We don’t even know who the original tip came from.”

 

Frohike nodded. “I’d agree with you except for the information that Langly unearthed. This Foundation has an employee on the rolls with no job description other than ‘operative’ and no past. The man literally didn’t exit a few years ago. And they’ve been linked to some high profile crimes -- apparently they're some sort of investigative organization. That and according to Langly, they have anti-hacking security that rivals the Defense Department. He’s had a hell of a time getting into their systems. They may not have an artificial intelligence but there might still be a story here. I think it’s worth investigating.”

 

Byers sat back and glanced around the room, looking for anything suspicious. When his eyes settled back on Miles, the man had pulled out a cell phone and was making his way toward the aisle, obviously leaving to take a call. Byers and Frohike looked at each other and waited until Miles had passed them before grabbing Jimmy and following him out.

 

Miles continued through the convention area and out the lobby of the hotel. Frohike put a hand up to slow down the guys and watched through the glass doors as a black Trans Am pulled up. A tall, athletic man with wavy hair and a leather jacket jumped out of the driver’s side door. He came around the car and clapped Miles on the back. Then the two moved away from the entrance and out of the guys' field of view.

 

“That’s him. That’s the operative Langly was telling us about. Michael Knight,” Byers said.

 

“Nice car.” Jimmy looked admiringly at the Trans Am, an earlier model of his own pride and joy.

 

Byers rolled his eyes, exasperated. “We’ve got to get closer to them to hear what they’re saying.”

 

Frohike looked around the lobby for inspiration and saw a man outside, smoking near the front doors. He grabbed a book of matches off a stand next to the entrance and motioned for Jimmy and Byers to wait. He walked out into the late afternoon sun and approached the smoker.

 

"I quit, but . . . you know. Mind if I bum one from you?" he asked.

 

The man gave him a pitying glance and shook a cigarette loose from the pack. Frohike strolled a few steps away and then leaned against a square pillar in front of the hotel, just in earshot of the pair talking to his right. He lit the cigarette and let it dangle nonchalantly between his fingers.

 

“Yeah, Devon, we just got in and we haven’t been able to get in touch with her either. We’re worried that she might be in real trouble. Kitt and I were planning to head over to her house and see if we can find anything.”

 

“That sounds like a good idea, Michael. I’ve been checking my voicemail and email regularly, but she hasn’t left any further messages.”

 

“And she never sent the email she mentioned?”

 

“No. Nor has she answered her phone. I think our first order of business is to find her and make sure she’s alright.”

 

“Already on it, Devon. We’ll check in if we find anything,” Knight said before jumping back into the car and peeling out of the circular hotel driveway.

 

Frohike waited until Miles reentered the hotel before snuffing out his cigarette and going back inside to tell Byers and Jimmy what he heard.

 

OoOoO

 

Michael Knight pulled up to the small fifties-vintage ranch-style home on the outskirts of Baltimore. “I think this is it, pal,” he said, craning his neck to get a better look.

 

“What gave it away? The number above the door?”

 

Michael let out a long suffering sigh and glared down at the dash where a voice modulator box passed for his partner’s ‘face’. “You know somebody woke up on the wrong side of the garage this morning, pal, and it wasn’t me.”

 

“At least I don’t prevent you from sleeping.”

 

“You don’t sleep, Kitt.”

 

“I need to let my systems recharge, Michael. Especially after driving straight through at top speed to get to Washington.”

 

Michael fought the urge to snap back. It was best to just let things like this drop. As fond as he was of his non-human friend, occasionally their partnership looked more like a bad marriage and today was unfortunately one of those days. “I’ll let you have your recharging time as soon as I can, but Linda is missing and I want to find her as soon as possible. Now can we get back to investigating her house?”

 

“I’m sorry, Michael. You’re right. We need to find Linda. I guess I’m just feeling a little run down.”

 

“It’s okay, buddy. I’m not at my best when I don’t sleep either.”

 

The property was registered to Linda Parker. Kitt had poured over everything he had on her during the drive out, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Michael leaned forward and carefully surveyed the area around the house. There was a stand-alone garage to the side that formed part of a fenced-in yard. The side entrance to the house along the driveway was covered with a pretty green awning.

 

Michael proceeded up the flagstone walk and knocked on the door. He waited a moment but no one answered. "Anyone inside, buddy?" he asked over the comlink watch that allowed him to communicate with his partner when he was out of the car.

 

"No, Michael."

 

He held his comlink up to the door and Kitt took his cue to unlock it. Michael gently pushed the door open. “Hello?” he called out but the house was quiet. Nothing looked out of place. It looked like Linda would be home in a few hours for dinner. The house was small but cozy, with tasteful furniture and pretty flowers in pots on the fireplace mantel.

 

"Kitt, can you scan for anything unusual?"

 

"Of course, Michael. But my preliminary scans didn't reveal anything."

 

"Take another look." Michael continued his search in the meantime. He recoiled at the strong scent of perfume that haunted a broken bottle in the master bedroom but other than that, everything seemed in order.

 

"Michael, I'm not detecting anything unusual. Although it might help if I knew what I was looking for."

 

"If I knew, I’d tell you." Michael took another look through the kitchen drawers. He found a small black notebook that contained a daily calendar. There were a series of numbers written on the pages. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but he slipped it into his pocket.

 

"Let's go back to the hotel and meet up with Devon and Bonnie. Maybe they've managed to turn up something on her."

 

OoOoO

 

Jimmy was bored. But then he usually was on stake outs. He and the guys were sitting in the VW bus that acted as their base of operations when they were out gathering information on a story.

 

Byers had called Langly with the license plate number for the black Trans Am that had peeled out of the parking lot. Of course, running it seemed rather pointless, even to Jimmy, since the California vanity plate said 'KNIGHT.' It was a safe bet that they were right about the identity of the man who'd been talking to Devon Miles. They'd also seen Miles go back to a black semi trailer that was parked in the lot behind the hotel. Besides Miles, there was a pretty brunette coming and going from the trailer. Byers had used the digital camera to take her picture so Langly could look her up. He was also trying to find information on the name Knight had mentioned to Miles, Kitt. They hadn't heard back from him yet, so they were eyeing the truck, waiting.

 

"What would they need a semi for? This is a conference. They shouldn't be carrying more than a few Powerpoint slides and some trinkets to hand out to the attendees," Frohike asked.

 

"Maybe they have a lot of trinkets?" Jimmy offered helpfully.

 

"Let's see if this can help us get some answers." Frohike produced a small gadget from one of the storage containers lining the back wall of the bus and flipped up what looked like a tiny antenna.

 

"What's that?" Jimmy asked. The Gunmen had such cool gadgets. Jimmy wished he got to use them more.

 

"It's a radio frequency sniffer," Frohike answered, gesturing with the device, which was slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes. He moved some switches, then held it up in the air. "If they're using any high tech equipment or transmitters, it'll tell us what frequencies are being emitted. I'm going in for a closer look."

 

Frohike carefully opened the side door and slunk into the parking lot. He moved from car to car, working his way closer to the black semi and watched with fascination as the signal strengths on the sniffer got incrementally stronger. He got right up to the semi and moved around to the back so that if there was a driver in the cab, he wouldn’t be seen.

 

The signals were off the charts – the meter was completely saturated. He was still staring down at the device when he heard a door open and suddenly found himself face-to-face with the brunette they'd seen with Miles. She was taller than Frohike had thought and had gray, suspicious eyes.

 

"Can I help you?" she asked, looking down at the electronic sniffer in his hand.

 

"Oh, no, Ma'am. I'm just testing ozone levels for the city. We have to take readings at several different points in the area and this parking lot happens to be one of them."

 

The woman looked down at the gadget again. Then her eyes narrowed and she seemed to be memorizing every detail of Frohike's face. She crossed her arms and didn't say anything. Frohike took that as his cue to leave. He scuttled away in the direction of the hotel, and turned back to see the woman disappear into a door on the side of the trailer.

 

Once she was gone, Frohike switched direction and headed back toward the bus. She was hot, not Scully hot, of course, but good looking, he thought. Too bad she was probably a bad guy. Just like Yves. What was it about brunettes, Frohike wondered. He pulled open the door to the van and tossed the sniffer on the rack in back.

 

"What did you tell her?" Byers asked.

 

"I told her I was taking ozone readings, but she wasn't buying it. And she knows what I look like now, so I'm going to have to keep a low profile. Did she spot either of you?"

 

"I don't think so," Byers said.

 

"Good. "But I'll tell you one thing, that truck has got to be filled with electronic equipment. There were emissions all over the place. The sniffer was saturated on several frequency bands the whole time I was over there."

 

"Well, that's further proof that FLAG isn't exactly the mild mannered philanthropic charity they claim they are."

 

"Guys, check it out," Jimmy said from the front seat.

 

Byers and Frohike turned to look out the windows and saw that the Trans Am was back. They watched, fascinated, as the car paused behind the trailer and a ramp slowly lowered.   The car carefully drove up the ramp and disappeared inside.

 

"Wow. That's such a beautiful car," Jimmy said in his usual wide-eyed manner.

 

OoOoO

 

"So you don't know any more about her?" Michael asked as he took the coffee mug Devon offered him and flopped down in one of the semi's leather chairs. He stared at his partner's black prow in the garage area, hypnotized by the tracking scanner. The semi wasn't big, but there was enough room for a kitchen, an office area, and a garage bay. The perfect mobile base of operations.

 

"I'm afraid not," Devon replied.

 

"I've got her file for you, Michael," Bonnie Barstow said from her seat at the computer. "But there isn't much to go on. She does work for Maricrafters, but other than that, there isn't much remarkable about her,"

 

"Anything in there that would give us a clue about where she might go if she needed to hide?"

 

"Her parents live in Phoenix and she has a sister in Scottsdale, but Devon already called them. They haven’t heard from her in at least two weeks. Other than that, I couldn't tell you," she said.

 

Michael pulled the notebook out of his jacket pocket. “Do you have any idea what these might be?”

 

Bonnie and Devon both glanced at the series of numbers. “They look like they could be account numbers,” Bonnie speculated, taking the book. “I’ll see if I can find anything.”

 

"Okay, let's assume for a second that she is in trouble, and not just hiding. Do we have any idea what information she had or who else might know about it? Did she say who she was afraid of?"

 

"No. I would presume someone in the government or another employee at Maricrafters," Devon suggested.

 

"Kitt, give me everything you can run down on Maricrafters. What are their current projects? What government agencies are they currently working with? Look for anything unusual in the books."

 

"You'll have it as soon as I do."

 

"Damn it." Bonnie pushed back from the computer.

 

Michael smirked. "Computer not behaving?"

 

“I wish it were that simple. We've had a very persistent hacker in our systems the last few days. And he's good. They’ve had to suspend remote login access several times. I’m assuming, since I just lost access again, that they haven’t managed to patch all the holes he’s exploiting yet.”

 

Michael gave Devon a significant look. "We must be onto something. Any possibility this hacker got any information about the case?"

 

"It's possible, but it looks like whoever it is, is after information about FLAG,” Bonnie said, glaring at her computer as though she could see the hacker working away behind the monitor. "You know, when I went out to unlock the ramp just before you came back, there was somebody suspicious hanging around the semi. He gave me a song and dance about checking ozone levels, but I'm pretty sure he had some sort of homegrown signal strength meter in his hand. I think someone might be making a concerted effort to get information about us."

 

"It would appear that way," Devon said. Then he brought his hand up to his chin as a thought struck him. "Actually, now that you bring up that possibility, there was a young woman in the hotel bar a few nights ago who was very interested in my presentation for the conference. She went so far as to offer to help me over drinks."

 

Bonnie and Michael shared sly smiles. "Really?" Bonnie said.

 

“Maybe she was just interested in you, Devon,” Michael added with a mischievous grin.

 

Devon gave him a stern frown to discourage that line of questioning. "Perhaps we are being targeted by some group of people. It may or may not be related to Linda Parker's disappearance. I believe it would be best if we were all on alert."

 

"Will do, Devon.” Michael took a sip of coffee. “First thing in the morning, we’ll pay Maricrafters a visit.”

 

OoOoO

 

Maricrafters was located in Baltimore, close to BWI airport. It was a bit of a drive from DC but Michael had the T-tops open, the windows down, and he was enjoying the trip. Part of him was worried about Linda, but she had been such a mystery from the beginning. Only Devon had had any contact with her and that had only been over voicemail. He was having a hard time deciding whether he thought she was really in trouble or if there was something else going on here. The hacker situation was pushing him toward the latter option but he didn't have anything to go on there but a hunch.

 

"Kitt, you haven't noticed any attempts to break into your systems, have you?" Michael asked on the way to Maricrafters.

 

"No, Michael. So far, all the efforts at infiltration have been directed at the Foundation's main network."

 

"This whole situation has me confused. There's just something that isn't adding up."

 

"I agree Michael, but I don't think there's much we can do except continue to investigate."

 

Michael couldn't think of any better ideas.

 

They drove in silence through the urban landscape. The buildings and bridges were all older and the city was more gray than he was used to in Los Angeles. There were no bright pastel buildings and since they'd been there, the sky had been overcast, giving the East Coast a dark, dingy feel. Michael wondered if it ever got that brighter-than-life feel that LA often had.

 

They entered the Baltimore city limits, which were only signified by a sign. The city was all one big urban sprawl run together. They took the airport exit and wound their way through the city's side streets. They came to an industrial park with a shipping company, a small tools manufacturer, and a non-descript brown brick building. "So this is the place, huh?"

 

"Yes, Michael, this is Maricrafters. Linda's office is located in the basement, in the southwest corner of the building."

 

Michael looked at the video monitor where Kitt had displayed the building's floor plan. There was a red dot indicating the room that held Linda's office.

 

"Can you get me Linda's boss's name?"

 

"William Lee."

 

"Okay, keep your scanners peeled. I'll be back in a few."

 

Michael jumped out and made his way across the parking lot, weaving through cars and SUVs. The main lobby of the building had several security guards milling around, checking for badges as people entered. He walked up to the main reception desk. "Excuse me. I'd like to speak to William Lee."

 

"Do you have an appointment?" The tall, sandy-haired guard asked. Michael shook his head. "Ok, then you'll need to call him from that phone." The guard gestured to a white phone on the wall before looking up the extension for Michael.

 

Michael picked up the phone and dialed. A pleasant voice answered the phone and identified the speaker as William Lee.

 

"Hello, Mr. Lee. You don't know me. My name is Michael Knight and I work for the Foundation for Law and Government. I'd like to talk to you about Linda Parker."

 

"Linda? Do you know where she is?" the man asked anxiously.

 

"No, but I'm looking for her and I'd like to ask you a few questions if that's possible. I'm in the lobby right now, if you have a few minutes."

 

"Of course, I'll be right there."

 

It wasn't long before William Lee came through the lobby doors. Michael motioned to him and held out his hand.

 

"It's good to meet you Mr. Knight," Lee said, shaking his hand. "Follow me."

 

Lee led the way out of the lobby and to a bank of elevators located just inside the complex. They took one down a floor.

 

"I've been very worried about Linda. She hasn't been to work all week now and she hasn't called in. It’s very unlike her."

 

"What sort of work has she been doing, Mr. Lee?"

 

"Oh, call me Bill."

 

Michael nodded.

 

"Uh, she's been modeling subsystems of a radar we're working on. She was involved in the systems level design."

 

"Has she mentioned anything about getting any threats or has she had a falling out with any of her coworkers?" Michael asked as they stepped off the elevator and Bill used his badge to card into a room off the main hallway.

 

"No, not that I know of. Well, I should say nothing out of the ordinary. The project she's working on is a high stress one, so there have been a few clashes between the different project leads. Sometimes it's hard to know the best direction when you're trying to create something state-of-the-art."

 

Michael smirked a bit as an image of Bonnie trying to work with someone else on Kitt popped into his head. "I imagine it is."

 

Bill led him through a maze of cubes and into a rather bare office. There were a few pictures on the wall of family, but other than that, the bare beige walls and grey desk gave the office an institutional feel. Bill offered Michael a seat and took his place on the other side of the desk. "What can I do to help?"

 

"For starters, you could tell me what Linda is like? Does she have a lot of friends or does she keep to herself?"

 

"She seems to get along with most everyone but she isn't real outgoing. She's somewhat reserved. I don't think there are any coworkers she sees socially, but as far as I know, she hasn't had any problems with anyone. Most everyone likes her."

 

"Okay. Can I see where she sits?"

 

"Of course." Bill popped up and led him out into the main room again. He took Michael to a large cube that was neatly organized. There was a picture on the desk of Linda on a ski hill smiling through her scarf and goggles. Next to that was a picture of Linda with a couple who might have been her parents. No sign of a boyfriend.

 

Michael glanced at what had to be designs or schematics sitting on the desk. They were somewhat scattered and were mostly Greek to him. He tapped his comlink and held it out casually over the papers, hoping Kitt would get the hint and take some pictures.

 

Michael took one more look around and then decided he wasn’t going to get much more of use here. "Anything else you can tell me?"

 

Bill shrugged apologetically. "Sorry."

 

Michael pulled a card from his pocket. "If you think of anything, give me a call, day or night."

 

"I will." Bill shook his hand again. "If you find her or hear anything, please let me know. We're worried about her."

 

OoOoO

 

Frohike had been driving the VW bus as they followed the black Trans Am through the morning traffic. They had taken turns all night staking out the hotel parking lot and were ready to go when Knight left in the car first thing in the morning. They were hanging back, trying to avoid detection until Knight turned off onto the streets of Baltimore. They'd almost lost him, so they closed the distance and circled around the block when they saw him pull into the parking lot of an industrial building.

 

"Guys, this is Maricrafters," Byers said. "They make several intelligence gathering systems including spy satellites. They've been implicated in attempts to sell classified systems to unfriendly foreign nations like China and Iran, but it was never proven."

 

"And I bet they'd love to have an artificial intelligence to sell. That would be the ultimate intelligence gathering system," Frohike added.

 

"It would be the ultimate in a lot of things," Byers said, distracted.

 

"Well, are we going to just sit here all day, or are we going to do something?" Jimmy asked. He grabbed a slim jim and a crowbar from behind the rack of equipment and pulled the bus's side door open.

 

"Jimmy, what are you doing?" Byers asked.

 

"I'm going to go find out what's in that car. We've got to see if it's an artificial intelligence, right?"

 

"Jimmy, wait," Byers started but he was already out the door. "Jimmy, no."

 

"Hey, guys. Not a problem. I'm an expert at getting into Trans Ams. I'm always losing my own keys," Jimmy called back as he hurried between the parked cars.

 

Byers and Frohike shared one of those looks. If it weren't for the fact that Jimmy helped them with their paper financially, some days they just couldn't figure out why they put up with him. Not that the big lug hadn't grown on them, though.

 

"We can't let him go alone," Frohike said, making it perfectly clear who he thought should get babysitting duty.

 

"Alright, alright, I'm going."

 

OoOoO

 

Kitt watched as a tall, sandy-haired man made a clumsy attempt to approach him on the sly -- ducking behind cars and peeking out from around their bumpers. Kitt hadn't been sure that the bus had been following them until it entered the Maricrafters parking lot a few minutes after Michael went inside. He'd already run the plate and found out it was registered to one John Fitzgerald Byers. He had pulled up a picture of Byers and determined that he was currently following the blond man through the parking lot. While he watched their approach, Kitt busied himself getting pictures of the other occupant of the van and running them all against a database of known felons.

 

Kitt snapped a few more pictures as the first man approached and crouched down next to him. The man tried his door handle and Kitt immediately locked it and darkened the tint on his windows. The man pulled out a slim jim and attempted to break into him. Kitt sighed. He was tempted to tell the man that he was wasting his time, but with all the attempts to get information on the Foundation, he decided it wasn't wise.

 

OoOoO

 

Jimmy spent several minutes trying to get the car's door open. It just wouldn't budge. He'd never had this much trouble getting his own car open when he had to. He'd gotten quite good at popping the lock, although this was an older model than his car. He looked over his shoulder at Byers and shrugged. Then he leaned back to admire the car's mint condition finish. He'd like to talk to Knight about how he maintained this baby.

 

"You know, maybe if this car does have an artificial intelligence, it has extra security."

 

Byers just rolled his eyes.

 

Jimmy didn't understand why the guys were so negative all the time. He decided to double his efforts at helping them stay cheery. That decided, he slid down next to the car door and leaned back against it. There wasn't much he could do about extra security, but he had one more idea.

 

"Hi, Mr. Car. Are you in there?" Jimmy tried. "See we heard that you're an artificial intelligence, and we're here to rescue you."

 

 

"I promise I won't hurt you, if you let me in."

 

"Jimmy, I don't think anyone's going to answer you."

 

"You never know. Do you have a name, Mr. Car?" Jimmy asked, trying to be conversational.

 

If there was an AI in there, it wasn't very friendly.

 

"Come on, Jimmy. Let's get out of here before Knight comes back."

 

"Okay," he said dejectedly. "But there's definitely something strange about that car."

 

Byers led the way back to the van. "You might be right, but we aren't making any progress here. Let's go back to base and see what Langly's found out about all of this."

 

OoOoO

 

"Michael, did you find anything?" Kitt asked when Michael returned to the car.

 

"Unfortunately not."

 

"Well, you might be interested to know that we were followed here and one of the men made a halfhearted attempt to break into me. And Michael, he said he was here to rescue me."

 

"Rescue you? From what?"

 

"That's what I'd like to know."

 

"Did you get a picture of him?"

 

"Of course, Michael." Kitt flashed the various photos on his monitor for Michael's perusal. "The vehicle is registered to a John Byers." Kitt left the appropriate picture up. "According to tax records, he is also part owner of a small building in an industrial neighborhood in Baltimore. It's listed as the headquarters for a paper called The Lone Gunman."

 

Michael put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. "I've never heard of it."

 

"I didn't think you had. It's one of those conspiracy theory papers. They cover government conspiracies, corrupt businesses, and aliens, Michael."

 

"Sounds lovely. And they're here to rescue you, huh?" Michael said with a smirk.

 

"Michael, they know I'm an artificial intelligence. That could draw more attention than the Foundation would like, if they published an article about me."

 

"Buddy, I have a feeling they don't have too many readers."

 

"Be that as it may, Michael, they might be involved in this case or be responsible for hacking into our systems."

 

"That's a good point. Since we're out here anyway, plot the quickest course to the address of that building."

 

OoOoO

 

In silent mode, Kitt moved through the dark alley, avoiding blue garbage dumpsters, piles of old 2x4s, and rank puddles. There was just enough room for him to get through the alley comfortably. He hoped they didn't meet another car going the opposite direction. Michael was craning his neck looking at the addresses painted on the backs of the buildings. He was also looking at the old boarded up windows and cracked glass block that made up the mix of industrial buildings. They came up on a short, wide driveway in front of a low building with a below-ground doorway.

 

"This is it, Michael, but I don't see the VW bus anywhere."

 

"Scan the building."

 

"It’s full of electronic equipment – most of it eavesdropping devices. And Michael there is one man sitting at a computer." Kitt routed the image of the IR scan to the front monitor. There were several hot spots in the room, probably equipment, but only one bright enough to be a person.

 

"And Michael," Kitt said, his voice suddenly sounding surprised, "he's currently trying to hack into the Foundation's network."

 

"Is he armed?"

 

"No, Michael, no sign of any weapons at all."

 

"Okay, buddy, I'm going to have a little chat with our hacker friend here."

 

Michael exited the car and jogged over to the heavy metal door at the back of the building. He held his comlink over the knob and there was a series of clicks as four locks released their grip on the door. Carefully, Michael pushed the door open a crack and peered into the gloomy room. The only light came from a bank of florescent lights a ways back into the building. The dark room had an industrial feel to it. Despite the relatively large size, it was crammed full. There were aisles of equipment racks near the door then a section where the room opened up to a row of desks with four computers. There was one obsessively organized and neat desk in between several less kempt desks, which were scattered with papers and in sundry crap. There was a man with long blond hair, dressed in a black Ramones concert T-shirt sitting at one of the computers. He was entirely hunched over the keyboard, his shoulders rounded, his neck arched, and his face right in front of the screen, fingers moving furiously. He obviously hadn't heard Michael come in. Beyond him were more racks and Michael could see a doorway at the end that led to another room. Michael crept carefully toward the blond man. He got to the point where he could see the screen over his shoulder. He immediately recognized the Foundation's chess insignia logo on the screen.

 

"You're not cleared for that network." Michael's quietly menacing voice sounded louder than he intended in the large room.

 

The man in front of him gasped and flew out of his chair, a look of terror on his face. Michael tried to grab him by the collar but he broke free and scrambled in the direction of the door. Unfortunately for him, his foot got caught in the strap of a backpack and he went flying head first into a rack, knocking himself unconscious. Michael had to pull up quickly in order to stop from tripping over the man who had just fallen in front of him. He looked down at the guy and shook his head. "So much for my asking him a few questions, huh?" he said over the comlink. He considered his options for a moment. "Buddy, any chance he'll regain consciousness?"

 

"Yes, my scan of his vitals indicates that he's really semi conscious, and not badly hurt."

 

"How about I bring him to you for safe keeping?" Michael dragged the man to the doorway, then picked him up and hoisted him over his shoulder. Kitt helpfully popped the door for Michael and he dumped the man into the passenger's seat.

 

"If he comes to, you might not want to say anything to him. We still don't know what they want, so the less he knows about you, the better."

 

"Of course."

 

Michael glanced around the alleyway and then headed back into the building.

 

OoOoO

 

Langly's eyes fluttered open and he found himself staring sideways at a gearshift. He blinked, confused. Then he looked up and saw the cloudy white sky above him through a windshield. Carefully, he started to prop himself up and cringed at the headache that was forming. He was lying in a bucket seat, draped across the center console.   Luckily there wasn't anyone else in the car. In a flash, Langly remembered what had happened. An intruder had come up behind him while he was working on the FLAG network. He didn't get a real good look at the guy, but he was pretty sure it was Knight. He sat up, fully awake, and tried to open the car door. It was locked and for some reason, he couldn't find the mechanism to let himself out. That's when he noticed the dash. It was covered in lights of all different shades and shapes. Some of the buttons were obviously normal car functions but the rest where incomprehensible. Ski Mode, Turbo Boost, MicroJam. Langly wasn't sure what they did, but he was pretty sure they were on the right track with the story on the Foundation. Even though he didn't believe this car was an artificial intelligence, he knew it wasn't normal. It didn’t even have a normal steering wheel. And who knew what the Foundation used this baby for.

 

Langly decided that if he was going to be trapped in Knight's car, at least he was going to figure it out. He looked at the center monitor and studied the buttons around it. He tried pushing some of them, but just as he was about to touch each one, the LEDs giving them their lighted color went dark. Pushing them had no effect. He continued trying with the bank of buttons over his head. Again, they went out and didn't seem to have any effect. Langly thought that maybe the key needed to be in the ignition. He looked over at the steering column and found a button marked 'start.' Langly stabbed it and was surprised when the engine leapt to life with a powerful purr. He smiled, rubbed his hands together, cracked his knuckles, and then tried the buttons on the dash again. None of them had any effect. Langly figured that even if he couldn't get them to work, maybe he could at least figure them out. He reached under the dash and pulled at the wires he felt there. He managed to pull a few of them forward and checked for fuses. There weren't any. There were also fewer wires than he'd expected given the complexity of the dash. His headache forgotten, Langly pushed his seat back as far as it would go and slid down into the well in front of the seat, trying to get a better look at what was under the dash.

 

OoOoO

 

Kitt was frustrated by this interloper. He had been hoping the man would stay unconscious, but such was not his luck. Now the irascible person was digging around under his dash. He just couldn't allow him to poke and prod his circuitry. Kitt decided that a little ride would be just the incentive to make this man behave.

 

OoOoO

 

 

Langly was tracing a wire from underneath the video monitor. He had just given it a tug to see how much longer it was when the gearshift moved. Langly watched, shocked, as the accelerator depressed on its own.   "Hey! Hey, what's going on? Hey!!"

 

Langly grabbed the gearshift and tried to force it back to park. He struggled to get back into the bucket seat when the car backed up and peeled out of the driveway. His eyes widened as the Trans Am picked up speed and zipped through the alley. Langly crawled over the center console and into the driver’s seat, just as the car was clearing the alley. They came to the first cross street and the car lurched to the right and flung itself out into traffic. Langly grabbed for the steering yoke and held on for dear life. He looked around for some sign that the car was operating by remote. The monitors remained dark but he knew he wouldn't necessarily be able to see the sensors that would allow for remote operation.

 

"Whoever you are, let me out!" Langly yelled into the air. “I’m serious, stop this car!!” Langly pulled at the door handles again in vain and stomped on the brake, to no effect. He reached up and mashed his hand on as many buttons as he could but as before, they didn’t do anything.

 

Langly looked around, completely at a loss. He realized that the car was moving dangerously fast through traffic. It zipped around a slow moving car and careened around a corner, coming dangerously close to a semi parked in the fire lane. Langly snapped his eyelids shut and grabbed the steering yoke with white knuckles. When he didn’t hear the crash of twisting metal he hazarded a peek only to see that the car was headed down a hill, straight toward a back up of cars at an intersection. Langly watched in horror as the car got closer and closer to the intersection without showing any sign of slowing down. When they were within 20 feet of the last car in line Langly let loose a scream just as he was pushed back into his seat and a loud whirring sound filled the cabin. The car leapt forward and flew over the cars on the near side of the intersection. It continued on through the air and over the cars that were traveling through the green light in the opposite direction. There was a huge thump as the car dropped back down onto the pavement and continued on the other side of the intersection. It took Langly a few seconds to realize that he was still screaming. He snapped his jaw shut and stared wide-eyed at the road ahead of him. The car dropped down to a normal speed, turned right at the next intersection, and started making its way back to the warehouse. Langly didn’t let go of the steering wheel until they got back.

 

OoOoO

 

Kitt pulled into the driveway of the industrial warehouse feeling pleased with himself. Michael was outside of the building waiting for them in the alley. He strode up to the car and pulled the driver's side door open as Kitt released the manual override.

 

“Hey, glad you’re awake. Mind if I drive?” Michael asked with excessive joviality as he leaned into the car. The interloper shook his head violently ‘no’ and moved back across the console. He sat in the passenger seat with his eyes widely focused on Michael while Kitt drove back down the alleyway.

 

OoOoO

"So what were you doing in the Foundation's network?" Michael asked the surly man in the passenger seat.

 

"What are you doing trying to build the ultimate weapon?" Langly shot back.

 

Michael raised an eyebrow, completely mystified. "What are you talking about?"

 

"I saw the files. You're working on some super tank vehicle with artificial intelligence. And we saw you at Maricrafters."

 

Michael shook his head. "First of all, we are not building an ultimate weapon. Or a weapon of any kind. Second of all, we're here investigating the disappearance of a woman who worked for Maricrafters."

 

"A likely story," Langly spat back.

 

Michael rolled his eyes in frustration. "So why are you in our files?"

 

"I work for a newspaper. We're trying to get the truth out to the American people about scum like you."

 

"You really don't have any idea what we're about, do you? Even after getting a peek at some of our files."

 

Michael wanted to get more information before tipping his hand. He didn't want to let a reporter know about Kitt, even if it was a rag that no one read. He had also noticed that the VW bus was behind them. It was time to figure out what these guys were up to. They were approaching the conference center and Michael decided that it would be the perfect time to round up the whole crew and have a little chat.

 

He casually drummed his thumbs on the steering yoke, using morse code to let Kitt know his intentions. It was rare that they went to these lengths to hide Kitt, but it had come in handy once or twice in the past.

 

They pulled into the convention center parking lot and Michael noticed that Langly was nervously checking the side mirror. He pulled around the convention center and waited for the bus to find a parking space. Michael was pleased that they had chosen to park between a truck and an SUV. He put Kitt back in gear and flew through the aisle. The VW van started to back out, but it was too late. Kitt parked behind the bus, trapping it in its space. Michael jumped out, leaving the blond man in the passenger seat. Kitt thoughtful locked down behind him.

 

"Hi guys," Michael said as he pulled open the bus’s side door. He peered inside at all the electronic equipment and decided it had to be the poor man's version of the semi. There was one man in back looking at him with wide eyes and two men up front who were just shaking their heads.

 

"Look, you guys could run and I could chase at least one of you down, but I have your long-haired buddy and really, I just want to talk. I think you'll find that I'm not the enemy here."

 

"Then why did you kidnap Langly?" a man in a black leather vest asked defensively.

 

"Because he was breaking into our computer system and you guys have been following us. I just want to talk, guys."

 

The two men in the front seat gave each other a look and then the one in a suit said, "Okay. We'll hear you out."

 

They left the van and Michael watched them carefully, mindful of the fact that there were four of them and one of him. Kitt let his captive go and then moved behind Michael.

 

The tall athletic man turned to Michael, mouth gaping. "Whoa! That car is an artificial intelligence, isn't it?"

 

Langly cuffed him on the head. "No, idiot, it's remote controlled, but you should have seen it jump."

 

Michael tried to hide his smile. He had been wondering just how much Kitt had shown off. "Come on, let's talk in my office." He led them over to the semi and held the door open for the group.

 

Devon was standing in the office area and looked at him quizzically.

 

"We've got company, Devon. I'd introduce you, but I don't know their names yet."

 

Bonnie crossed her arms and gestured to the shortest of the group. "Well, he's the 'city ozone inspector,'" she said, bitingly. "But we haven't been properly introduced."

 

"We don't have to tell you anything," the man shot back.

 

"No, you don't," Michael said, "but if we're going to get to the bottom of all this, we have to start somewhere."

 

The ozone inspector shared a look with the suit and then shrugged. "I'm Frohike. This is Byers, Langly, and Jimmy," he said cocking head at each of them in turn.

 

"Langly was hacking into the Foundation's network when I found him," Michael said. Devon and Bonnie turned to glare at him.

 

"Why?" Devon asked. "You have no business breaking into our systems like that."

 

"Because we got a tip that you've created an artificial intelligence. The American public deserves to know the truth."

 

Bonnie looked at Michael questioningly. "They publish a newspaper," Michael said with a wry grin.

 

"And what exactly do you think the truth is?" Devon asked.

 

"That you’re using an artificial intelligence for the Defense Department. That you're creating a super soldier." Frohike crossed his arms, obviously expecting an explanation.

 

"I assure you, your information is flawed," Devon said.

 

"I told you they didn't have an artificial intelligence," Langly groused to Byers.

 

"We got a tip to look into it. We're just following a lead," Byers said diplomatically.

 

"And who is the woman working for you?" Devon asked.

 

"What woman?" Byers asked.

 

"The young brunette who was trying to get information about our operations?" Devon clarified.

 

The four men shared a guarded look. "Was she tall, thin, with a British accent?" Byers asked.

 

Devon nodded.

 

Frohike let out a sigh. "You know, I thought that tip sounded a little more specific and global than most of our tips."

 

"Did she give you a name?" Byers asked.

 

"Daryah Lee Selvow I believe," Devon answered.

 

Langly rolled his eyes. "She typically goes by Yves Adele Harlow."

 

Frohike pulled out a photograph and handed it to Devon. "This her?"

 

"Yes."

 

Michael took the picture and after glancing at it, raised an eyebrow. "Devon, this is the woman who hit on you in the bar?"

 

“That’s her. I'm quite sure of it."

 

Michael smirked. "You're a better man than me."

 

Devon rolled his eyes. "Heaven help us if someone sends a beautiful woman after _you_ to get information."

 

"Do you know who she works for, if she's not working with you?" Michael asked the four men.

 

"No,” Frohike said. “She seems to be for sale to the highest bidder. She’s a high tech thief. And she's used us to track down things for her in the past - usually without our knowledge."

 

Bonnie gave Michael a pointed look, then said, "So you think she put you on our trail in order to get information on our operation?”

 

"Anything's possible when Yves's involved," Langly said.

 

"Is there any chance she's involved with Maricrafters. We're investigating a case involving a woman there who called us for help and then disappeared. She said she had information on the company."

 

"That could have been a ruse by Yves. Or it could have nothing to do with her. But why would this woman call you for help?" Byers asked.

 

"Contrary to popular belief, we are not in the business of helping the Defense Department. We are in the law enforcement arena, but we tackle cases where the local authorities are often unable to help," Devon chided.

 

"Yeah, right. That's why you need someone on your payroll who has no history," Langly cracked, looking right at Michael.

 

Michael stared right back at him. "I'm a very private person," he said with what he hoped was the right amount of menace. He didn't want these guys digging into his past.

 

"Whatever," Langly said.

 

"Since you've been caught trespassing in our network, I believe we hold the cards here. But perhaps we can come to an agreement,” Devon proposed.

 

Langly looked distinctly uncomfortable. "What kind of agreement?"

 

"If you cease and desist from following us and there are no further incursions into our network, we won't press charges," Devon said with a bemused smile.

 

Michael tried to keep his own smile in check while the four men squirmed.

 

"Yes, that sounds reasonable," Byers said. "Thank you, sir."

 

Devon just nodded.

 

"Right, well I guess we'll be on our way." Frohike said giving Langly and Jimmy looks.

 

Devon politely ushered them to the door and let them out of the semi. Kitt was parked next to it, gleaming in the sun.

 

"I know you're in there, Mr. Car," Michael heard Jimmy say as they walked past him. "If you need help, you know where to contact us."

 

"Come on," Langly said, cuffing Jimmy on the shoulder. "They don't have an AI."

 

When they were gone, Kitt's scanner flashed and he drove himself back up the ramp.

 

"Well that was interesting," he said to the three humans standing there.

 

"Yeah, buddy. Whoever their informant is, he or show knows a lot."

 

"Too much," Devon said.

 

"And the one, Jimmy, seems to believe without question that I'm an artificial intelligence. He keeps saying things to me whenever he's in my vicinity."

 

"Hopefully, they've taken my threat seriously and we've seen the last of them." Devon said.

 

"Something tells me that might be wishful thinking. In the meantime, I think we should look into this Yves woman."

 

"I don't exactly feel comfortable with a high tech thief trying to get information about Kitt," Bonnie said, concern clouding her face. “The IT experts think there may have been more than one hacker. So even if we know that Langly was in our system, there may have been others. Also, they believe that at least one of the hackers got into Kitt’s schematics. If it’s this Yves Harlow and she’s intending to steal him …”

 

"Now that we have a name, or at least an alias, maybe our research will yield some more clues,” Devon suggested.

 

"You guys stay on it and let me know if you find anything,” Michael said. “In the meantime, Bonnie, have you found out anything else about Maricrafters?"

 

"No, but I've been busy trying to safeguard our network. Hopefully I'll have more time to devote to it now."

 

"Good. We haven't found anything in Linda's personal life that seems suspicious, but it doesn't hurt to dig a little deeper now that we have another possible angle. One way or another, we'll get to the bottom of this.”

 

OoOoO

 

Yves was slunk low in her rented Alpha Romeo watching the black semi. She could be less ostentatious when it was required, but in this case, she felt free to lead the life she was accustomed to. The Foundation for Law and Government had surprised her. She had expected a far more shadowy, regimented organization, but FLAG didn’t rise to that level. In a way, she was disappointed. It had been a while since she'd had to exercise her training. She had hoped that Michael Knight/Long would be a challenge, but he lacked a careful and disciplined approach. It seemed that his MO was to hide in plain sight -- which made it incredibly easy for anyone bothering to look. Few people were as well trained as Yves, so she was always on the lookout for the occasional equal.

 

The semi itself was attention drawing -- black, regal, and therefore eye-catching. That, and the occupants were remarkably routine in their comings and goings. She could count on the truck being empty by ten or eleven at night. It was just a matter of waiting until Knight brought the car in. She'd arrived at 9:00 PM, and a little under an hour later, the sleek Trans Am had climbed up the ramp. That was half an hour ago and Yves was eager to make her move.

 

She glanced down at the pulsing electronic box next to her. She'd 'acquired' it a few months back from a Saudi national who had 'acquired' it from a less than scrupulous defense worker. It was the key to getting close to the car -- an electronic scrambler that worked over a wide frequency range - wide enough to prevent the Knight Industries Two Thousand from detecting her presence. Or so she hoped. It was supposed to operate without obvious distortions to the spectrum, but Yves didn't entirely believe everything she'd heard about the device. Even in thievery, the stealer best beware.

 

At ten thirty, the venerable Dr. Bonnie Barstow left the semi through the side door, pressed a button to reveal a hidden keypad and activated the alarms, before making her way through the parking lot to the hotel.

 

As security systems went, Yves had to admit it was good. A rotating combination of numbers unique to the individual's biometrics with, from what Yves could tell, only three or so people having access to disarm it. Perfectly adequate unless the person wanting to get in had something sophisticated, and Yves was quite well connected in anti-security circles too.

 

She waited until Barstow had entered the hotel and just long enough to make sure she wasn't going to come back out. Yves stowed the scrambler in her leather bag, quietly opened her car door, and slid out into the darkness.

 

Yves was well accustomed to the dark. She preferred it. She could be anyone in the dark, and it covered all manner of sins.

 

When she reached the semi, she carefully removed a palm-sized device from her leather satchel and placed two prongs into the cracks between the hidden panel and the door. She glanced once at the scrambler to make sure it was working and hit the button on her device. It took several seconds for the LED numbers to stop spinning. When they did, Yves placed a small biometric replicator next to the panel, typed in the numbers, and the door clicked open.

 

Inside, the trailer was dark with only the pale green glow of electronics to illuminate the back end of the semi and highlight her prize. The Knight Industries Two Thousand sat silent under the glow. It was as darkly foreboding as the semi that held it, but unlike the truck there was a deep sense of mystery. It seemed to suck in the light around it and bend the rays to its curves. It was rare that Yves was awestruck. She moved through fabulous circles and had stolen things that many only dreamed of seeing. But this car was amazing -- even its aura seemed alive.  

 

So far the scrambler seemed to be doing its job so Yves carefully removed the second device from her bag and cautiously approached the car. The scrambler could not protect her if the car had acoustic sensors or video cameras trained on her, which according to the Foundation's network, was possible. But in her hacking, she hadn't found out how or when it was likely to use them. She was hoping that in its quiet time, it paid less attention to the world around it.

 

Yves crouched as she closed on the car, pausing to admire the beautiful finish before attempting to complete her task without being spotted. She flipped a switch on a third, smaller device-- a more powerful type of scrambler that emitted enough electromagnetic interference to temporarily disable almost any electronic piece of equipment it was attached to. According to the Foundation's schematics, the CPU was located on the right side of the car, toward the back of the engine compartment. If she placed the scrambler too close she risked damaging it, but she had to cut off its ability to access its other systems. She crept along the aluminum skin of the semi and crouched by the car's right wheel well. .She wanted to come at it as obliquely as possible in hopes of avoiding any active cameras. Carefully Yves stretched her arm up over the hood. She let her hand hover there a moment, hoping she had the right place and then let go of the scrambler. The strong magnet in its base grabbed the car's hood with a loud thud. Instantly, there was a flash as lights inside the car jumped to life, and then just as quickly they died out as the scrambler took effect. Yves froze, waiting.

 

 

It had worked as advertised. She would have to remember that the Saudi was a good source.

 

She waited, still half expecting the engine to roar to life and alarms to sound, but the inside of the semi was filled only with the soft whirring of the other electronics. Yves ran a hand along the car's hood as she sidled to its driver’s side door. The LEDs in the handle were green.

 

"You are truly a magnificent creature," she whispered. "Sorry to have to do this, but I need to borrow a little of your time."

 

Yves opened the driver's door and slid inside. It only took a few minutes to familiarize herself with the controls. Then she reached into her bag for the last of her little devices -- a tiny signal recorder she'd used earlier to capture the remote control code -- and used it to lower the semi's ramp. She pressed the car's start button and smiled when the engine whirred to life.

 

Yves put the car in gear, guided it down the ramp, and slipped out into the night.

 

OoOoO

 

-knightshade

09/21/14


	2. Chapter 2

Yves pulled the car into a nondescript building with a sign over the roll-down door that said Geyser Cold Storage. Its exterior was gray, rusting and almost entirely unremarkable. Inside, the building was another story entirely. The garage was clean, white, and alive with the background hum of electronics. There was a utilitarian bench along one wall and a well-stocked rack of tools along the other. It was smaller than Yves would have liked, but large enough to bring the car in easily. Normally she didn’t like to be tied down to one location -- she moved from hotel to hotel in the DC area -- but this heist required a lot of prep work, so she'd had time to set up a workspace.

 

Yves got out of the car and strode over to the table where she'd carefully laid out the car’s schematics and cable wiring diagrams. It was thoughtful of the Foundation technicians to put an emergency kill switch in the vehicle. Yves assumed it was a safety measure to protect the CPU in case of some catastrophic event in the car, but now it served a rather useful purpose for her. As soon as she lifted the hood, her scrambler would start to lose its hold on the CPU, potentially allowing the AI to get control of the car again and escape. She would have to open the hood and hit the kill switch before the AI regained its awareness.

 

Yves contemplated the car. Even though she knew it was immobile, it still felt dangerous -alive, like a panther frozen in the tall grass. She found the hood release and pulled it. Then she hooked the hydraulic lift she’d installed in the ceiling under the hood. She positioned herself along the side of the engine compartment, where the wiring diagram showed the emergency cutoff. Using the remote in her hand, she turned on the hydraulics and pulled open the hood. In an instant, there was a light show of LEDs activating on the CPU and in the bowels of the engine compartments. Hurriedly, Yves reached inside for the switch, and forced herself to be methodical when she didn't find it right away. She heard the engine turn over just as she spotted a nondescript black toggle nestled against the frame. She flipped open the cover and hit the switch. Almost instantly the LEDs went dark, the engine died, and the turbines slowly sped down.

 

Yves stepped away from the car, her heart beating quickly. “Sorry my little friend. Not this time.”

 

Then she gathered a toolbox, creep, and the wiring diagram and got to work.

 

*          *          *

 

Michael stopped at the hotel coffee kiosk to clear his head with a little caffeine and organize this thoughts. They seemed to be out of leads and he really wasn’t sure where to turn next. Linda had vanished and all he knew was that she had asked for their help. Devon and Bonnie were going to look into Maricrafters further but Michael felt like the case had come to a stand still. He wandered through the expensive lobby and decided to go see if his partner had any ideas.

 

The semi looked so out of place in the parking lot of a posh hotel, its large black hulk gleaming in the morning sunlight. Michael wove his way through parked cars, sipping his coffee and enjoying the warm day.

 

When he stepped inside the semi, he was surprised to see his partner missing, but not overly concerned.

 

“Hey pal, you have a hot date last night I didn’t know about?” he asked into his comlink. When he got nothing but static in response, the first tinges of concern started to surface. “Kitt?” Michael leaned out the open door of the semi and glanced around the parking lot. Still no sign of his partner.

 

"Kitt?"

 

Michael picked up the semi’s phone, worry now fueling his actions.

 

“Devon, wake Bonnie and get down here. Kitt’s gone.”

 

*          *          *

 

Yves sat back to admire her handiwork. She gave the schematics another once over, wanting to be sure she’d gotten everything. She’d had to break into several cables to clip the signal wires, but she’d tried to do it neatly, to cause as little damage as possible. She’d even carefully tied back all the dangling connectors so that they wouldn’t short out or otherwise interfere with the car’s operation. She was almost ready to turn the power back on, but first she had to decide what to do with the connector she was holding in her hand.

 

There was little risk in hooking it up, as far as she could tell. And she couldn't help being immensely curious, which in itself was leading her to err on the side of caution. But it seemed harmless. Everything else was deactivated or removed from the CPU’s control. She’d checked and double checked the schematics, layouts, and block diagrams. She was confident that the car was under her control and hers alone.

 

Which made the temptation to communicate with the world’s only known AI too alluring to resist.

 

Yves hooked up the audio connector in her hand and reached for the master power switch.

 

*          *          *

 

Bonnie shook her head, her lips pursed in frustration. “Nothing! No sign of him anywhere,” she said, looking up at Michael and Devon. “Somehow his homing beacon has been turned off. I’ve tried to contact him over the Foundation’s private channels, but he hasn’t responded. I’ve even tried to establish contact through the more basic links I can use to control him remotely and there’s nothing. I can’t establish a connection!”

 

She turned away from the computer to the grim faces behind her.

 

“How could his homing beacon be turned off?” Devon asked.

 

She gave it some serious thought. “I can only think of three ways. It’s possible to shut it down through software, but it’s a very complicated procedure. Someone would really have to know what they were doing. The second possibility would be to pull the hardware or its battery out of the engine compartment. The only other thing I can think of would be using some sort of jammer that interferes with the frequencies it broadcasts on.”

 

“How hard would it be to find the homing device and remove it?” Michael asked, his face downcast, filled with worry.

 

“Not easy. It’s hidden beneath his CPU and it’s very small. Someone would have to know what they were looking for.”

 

“What about the men you brought here, Michael? The ones who hacked into the Foundation’s computers?” Devon suggested. “Could they have gotten access to that information?”

 

“It’s possible,” Bonnie said. “We’re pretty sure the hacker was able to get a look at Kitt’s schematics. It would be pretty apparent if they knew what they were looking for.”

 

“Devon, I got a look at their van and their base of operations. They had a lot of electronic equipment, but it certainly didn’t look like the kind of operation that could get away with stealing Kitt.”

 

Bonnie looked back and forth between them. “There is another possibility. When the network experts were doing forensics on our system, they noticed the electronic equivalent of fingerprints all over the place. It was basically a ‘dirty’ hack. But there was some evidence that there might have been someone else in the system. I assumed at the time that it was just the brute force nature of the hack that left additional corrupted files, but the security team confirmed that there was most likely a second intruder.”

 

“Maybe the woman who approached you in the bar?” Michael asked Devon. “They did say she was a high tech thief and that she sometimes used them to get her hands on things.”

 

“Kitt would make quite an attractive target, I'm afraid” Devon mused.

 

“So how do we find her?” Bonnie asked. “All we have is an alias. I ran it everywhere I could think of but I couldn't find out anything more about her.”

 

“I’ve got four ideas,” Michael said, raising an eyebrow. “I'll go question them. If I can borrow your rental car, that is, Devon.”

 

“Of course. But what are you going to tell them?”

 

“Langly has already seen Kitt in action, but they seem satisfied that he’s just remotely controlled.”

 

“Good. Keep it that way. I’d rather Kitt not end up in a newspaper – respectable or not.”

 

“You got it, Devon. I’ll check in with you both later.”

 

*          *          *

 

Kitt became aware with a start. Being reactivated was always jarring, even under the best of circumstances, but this was frightening. The last data in his memory bank was a couple of frames of video -- a white room that was completely unfamiliar to him, his hood being lifted, and that was it. His systems had been coming online chaotically, not giving him good information. Then nothing. Now he was back online but none of his systems were. Everything was down – control of the car, access to any external communications channels, and most disconcertingly, his scanner and video cameras. He was effectively blind.

 

He could hear however. That was the one external system that still seemed to be receiving proper signals. While it should have been a relief, in reality, it was more unsettling. He wasn't sure what could cause all his external systems, save one, to fail. It was almost certainly deliberate which meant he was in trouble and didn’t have the inputs necessary to figure out what had happened to him. That combined with those stark images in his memory bank had him deeply worried. Where was he? What was going on?

 

Kitt was startled when he heard the characteristic tap-tapping of women’s high heeled shoes and a light swishing sound like fabric on fabric or maybe long hair brushing against something. Someone was moving around the front of his hood, along his driver’s side. Kitt had felt fear before, both fear for himself and fear for Michael, but this was bordering on panic. He couldn't do anything -- he was completely helpless.

 

“I trust that you’re . . . aware.”

 

The female voice was jarring in Kitt’s sensory deprived world and he jumped at it, his processor immediately trying to decipher who was talking to him. It wasn’t Bonnie, which had been his obvious hope, or April, or any of the other female technicians he'd come into contact with over the years. Which left him with only one guess, and that didn’t help his mental state any.

 

“Come now, don’t be shy.”

 

Kitt quickly determined that the subsection of his audio channels that allowed him to speak was still intact, but he didn’t know what to do. Answer? Don’t answer? He wasn't sure which was the right approach. If he talked to this woman, he could find out vital information about his circumstances, but perhaps he’d find out more by playing possum, so to speak. He noticed with a heap of discomfort that she hadn’t started the conversation by saying she wasn't going to hurt him.

 

“Where am I?” he finally asked.

 

“Somewhere quiet, out of the way.”

 

Kitt didn't know what to make of that answer. The tone hadn't held any obvious malice, but it sounded, to his unsettled mind, like a threat. His audio analyzer didn’t pick up anything telling at all. As far as female voices went, this one was average enough. It was firmly in the middle of the female vocal range and had a decidedly British accent. There was also an almost hollow, empty resonance to it that he’d normally associate with sadness, but in this case, there was nothing to corroborate that impression.

 

“Who are you?” he finally asked.

 

“Who do you think I am?” The voice sounded amused which made him angry. He didn’t want to play games. And he didn’t want to reveal more than necessary. But then again, she must know a lot about him if she had disabled his systems. Fear flooded back and Kitt decided he preferred the anger.

 

“I don’t believe I’ve heard your voice before and it would appear that I’ve been stolen. Logic would dictate that you’re the thief who approached Devon – Yves Harlow.”

 

There was a long pause. “Is that an important imperative in your . . . life? 'Logic' that is?”

 

Kitt didn’t like the unnatural pause before the word ‘life.’ It implied disbelief. “I’m a computer, what do you think?” he asked, allowing himself to be annoyed.

 

“I think you’re a much more than a computer.”

 

Kitt heard a sound that was as familiar as any in his world and it set off another cascade of fear. He suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable - at this woman’s mercy. She had opened his door. He then heard the companion sound of the door closing. She was inside him.

 

“What have you done to my systems?” he demanded, needing answers, needing to know how dire his situation was.

 

“They’re disabled.”

 

“How?”

 

She laughed. “Persistent, aren’t we? If you must know, I’ve disconnected the appropriate cables and signal lines.”

 

Kitt found himself soaked in a cold horror. There was nothing he could do to get control of his systems back. With software blocks or even certain hardware interference he could attempt to circumvent them, but being physically disconnected from his systems? He was completely helpless.

 

“Why have you done this? Why am I here?” he asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

 

“I just need to borrow you for a bit.”

 

Then Kitt’s microphones were saturated by the sound of his own turbine engines roaring to life.

 

*          *          *

 

The buzzer cut across the clicking of keyboards and the whir of computer fans. Frohike went to check the security camera monitor.

 

“Maybe it’s Yves,” Byers said looking over the copy for the meager edition they were putting out next week.

 

“Uh, guys,” Frohike said. “It’s not Yves.”

 

The rest of the group crowded around the screen to watch the tall man with curly hair pace outside their door with his hands in his pockets.

 

“What’s _he_ doing here?” Langly asked.

 

They shared a look before Frohike went to the door, turned all four locks, and carefully pulled it open. “Mr. Knight. Can we help you?” he asked.

 

“I hope so, yes,” Michael said.

 

Frohike turned to look back at the other guys. Byers gave him a nod and he stepped back to let Knight in.

 

“So what can we do for you, Knight?” he asked, crossing his arms defensively. “Or whatever your real name is.”

 

Knight sighed. “I need your help. Something of ours has been stolen. So I was hoping to get some more information from you about this Yves woman – how can I find her?”

 

“Let me guess, you lost your little urban assault vehicle,” Langly said mockingly.

 

Knight tilted his head and half rolled his eyes. “It’s not an assault vehicle, _it’s a car_. But it does have some features that in the wrong hands, could be dangerous.”

 

“Like the ability to jump over things,” Langly said.

 

“That’s one of them, yes.”

 

Frohike stepped forward. “No offense, but how do we know you’re the right hands to help get this car back to?”

 

Langly was right at his shoulder. “Yeah. We don’t usually help out shadowy, quasi-governmental agencies, who operate outside the legal system.”

 

Knight tipped his head back. “We’re just trying to help people. Sometimes, to get the really big guys, the authorities need help. We’re not vigilantes -- we turn criminals over to the authorities, we just help shut them down and bring them to justice.”

 

“Right,” Langly said. “And I’m the tooth fairy.”

 

“Check us out!” Knight said, obviously getting frustrated. “I assume you’ve got ‘access’ to the Justice Department’s files.”

 

Langly just smirked.

 

“Look up the cases against Boyd LaSalle, Simon Carascas, Tsombe Kuna, Charles Zurich. The Foundation had a hand in all of those.”

 

Langly sat down at this computer and pulled up a few screens. He began tapping quickly as the screens flashed before him. Byers leaned over his shoulder as Jimmy and Frohike watched Knight.

 

“He’s got a point, guys,” Byers said. “It looks like the Foundation was involved in those cases -- on the side of the Justice Department.”

 

“Probably after trampling all over the civil liberties of everyday taxpaying Americans.”

 

“Langly, enough,” Byers said, setting a hand on his shoulder before turning back to Knight. “If we were to help you, what do you need?”

 

“A way to find the woman, Yves, who approached my boss.”

 

Frohike nodded slightly to Byers and Langly. They had plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Yves. It wouldn’t be the first time she'd used them to get at something bigger. And from what Langly said, the car was pretty amazing. It sounded like the kind of thing Yves would want to steal.

 

“We’ll help you on one condition. We get the story on the car and whatever it is that led Yves to target you.”

 

Knight shook his head. “The Foundation doesn’t want any publicity.”

 

“What if we treat it as an unconfirmed story - use you as an unnamed source, and the Foundation as an unnamed agency?”

 

Knight shook his head. “Why bother then?”

 

“Because you’re probably only half the story. The woman you ran into sells what she steals. So there’s someone on the other end looking to buy. And Yves seems to know some pretty big fish. It’s a risk for us, but it’s at least possible this will pay off.”

 

Knight looked back and forth at the group. Finally he sighed. “Okay, unnamed source and agency only though.”

 

“And we investigate with you,” Frohike added.

 

“I work alone,” Michael protested.

 

“Do you want our help or not?”

 

Michael sighed. “Ok.”

 

“You've got a deal.” Frohike held out his hand and shook Knight's.

 

*          *          *

 

Odious woman, Kitt thought. He knew that she had been exercising his systems. He heard the characteristic whoosh of air when she turbo boosted, followed by the crunch as they hit the ground again. He assumed they were in a remote area since he hadn't heard any other cars in a while. He hoped that was the case anyway. He didn't want anyone to get hurt because a woman who had no idea how to use his systems was in control.

 

Kitt's main priority was to find a way to regain control of his systems. If this woman was to be believed and they were really physically disconnected, his only chance for escape was to convince her to hook them back up.

 

He heard a splintering noise and assumed she'd driven through something but he had no idea what. "Checking out the merchandise?" he asked sarcastically.

 

"Just trying to learn what you can do," she said.

 

"If you would reconnect some of my systems, I could help you."

 

There was a soft snort. "And here I thought computers couldn't lie."

 

"I don’t believe we can."

 

This time there was soft laughter. "And yet somehow I don't believe you want to help me."

 

"Be that as it may, I could at least tell you how to better use my systems."

 

"You just want to know where you are and how to get away."

 

"If you hooked up my video systems, I could at least see what you’re trying to do and let you know the best way of doing it. I'd have no control over the car, or any way to contact anyone. I wouldn't be a threat to you or you plans, whatever they may be."

 

"Somehow, I doubt that as well," she answered. There was a long pause, then the woman said, "Do you think its better to be in the dark, blissfully ignorant, or to see what's coming and not be able to stop it."

 

That hollowness that Kitt had noticed earlier was back again. "I guess that depends on what's coming doesn't it? I can see virtues in both."

 

"Hmm."

 

"But in general, I think more knowledge is better than less."

 

"Even knowledge that's negative or destructive?"

 

"You can't fight something if you don't know there's anything to fight."

 

"Sometimes you can't fight because the problem's too big or too immediate. Sometimes it’s just better not to know."

 

"You can always fight. You may not be able to win, but you can always fight," Kitt said, more to keep his own goals in perspective. He had to keep trying to get back in control of the situation. He heard a sigh and then nothing more. He needed to keep her talking to find out as much as possible about this woman, to try to convince her to let him go. He had no power in this situation other than his power to persuade. And he had a feeling he was going to have to earn her trust first before he could convince her to do anything.

 

"You never answered my earlier question. Are you Yves Adele Harlow?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I take it that's not your real name?"

 

"It's real enough."

 

"Meaning what exactly?" Kitt asked, genuinely confused.

 

"Meaning it's real to me." There was a pause and then something sly or clever in her voice. "It's probably as real to me as your driver's name is to him."

 

Kitt froze. What did she know about Michael?

 

"What is he running from?"

 

"What do you mean?" Kitt asked warily.

 

"People who change their names usually do so because they're running from their past."

 

"Is that why you changed yours?" he asked, trying to redirect the conversation away from Michael.

 

She laughed slightly, cynically. "Clever computer. You get a gold star."

 

"So what are you running from?"

 

"If I told you now, what would we discuss on our trip?"

 

Kitt was suddenly off kilter again, aware of his complete lack of control in this situation. "What trip? Where are we going?"

 

"We're going to meet someone from my past."

 

*          *          *

 

“The name she goes by is Yves Adele Harlow. It’s an anagram for Lee Harvey Oswald. She usually stays at hotels in the area under other anagrams for it,” Byers explained.

 

"And you guys don't know her real name?"

 

"Nope," Frohike said. "We've tried everything we can think of to find out. But we haven't had any luck."

 

"Do you still have that picture you showed us?"

 

"Sure. Why?" Frohike pulled the photograph out of a drawer.

 

"Can I have it? I'd like to take a crack at finding out who she is. We may have some sources you don't have access to." Michael looked at Langly. "And speaking of which, if you know the names she goes by, can you get into the area hotel records and find out where she's staying."

 

"Oh, I see. It's perfectly okay to hack as long as it's not _your_ network." Langly shook his head before accessing his computer.

 

"Something like that."

 

Langly typed at his computer for a few minutes before he leaned back. "I got it. She's at the W under the name Alese Levow-Hardy."

 

"Alright. Thanks guys," Michael said, heading toward the door.

 

"Oh no," Frohike said. "We had a deal. We're coming with you."

 

"Guys, I'll let you know as soon as I find anything."

 

"Uh-uh." Langly parked himself between Michael and the door before realizing how outmatched he was. Byers shoved Jimmy non-too subtly toward the door.

 

"Oh, right," Jimmy said. "You'll have to get through me. Us. First."

 

Knight just looked at them.

 

"Even if you do get past us, we'll just follow you," Frohike said.

 

"Fine. But we do this my way, okay?" He looked at each of the four men. "We clear on that?"

 

Byers nodded. "Yeah, we're clear."

 

*          *          *

 

After a couple of hours, Yves brought Kitt to a stop. He could have been back in the same room he'd been in previously or somewhere else entirely. He really didn't know. But when she got out of the car, there was a slight echo in the clicking of her heels which told him that he was somewhere with a lot of hard reflective surfaces and minimal furnishings. It was probably a garage.

 

"So where are you taking me?" he asked, not really expecting to get a straight answer.

 

"Tomorrow we're going for a drive."

 

"But where?"

 

"Does it really matter?"

 

"Yes, it matters. I want to know where you're taking me, what you're going to do with me."

 

"You'll find out tomorrow. We just have a little errand to run."

 

Kitt heard a small click and then some of the hum in the room went out, like florescent light bulbs being turned out. He heard the clicking of heels and a door shutting, then silence.

 

He was left alone in the quiet room, with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company.

 

*          *          *

 

Michael was hoping for something a little more comfortable than riding around in the back of an electronics-stuffed VW bus. "Did you guys make most of this stuff yourself?" he asked, looking at the van's 'periscope.'

 

"Yeah, I pieced most of it together," Frohike called from the front seat. "But it's nothing like that trailer of yours. That's one sweet set up in there."

 

Michael chuckled. They didn't even know the half of it. "Yeah, it makes for a nice base of operations."

 

"I'll bet. It probably costs more than the loot in Fort Knox."

 

"Something like that," Michael admitted, thinking about the time that Devon had warned him that it was worth a king's ransom.

 

"So you guys use all this gear to try to get stories for your paper?" Michael asked.

 

"Yeah. We can do wire taps and surveillance. Basic stuff like that. It comes in handy," Langly said.

 

“And you think _we_ trample on the rights of everyday taxpaying Americans?” Michael goaded.

 

Frohike smiled. “Touche.”

 

"What kind of stories do you guys work on?" Michael couldn't understand needing all the poor man's James Bond gadgets just to put out a paper that most people probably thought was one big paranoid delusion to begin with.

 

"Anything that has to do with corruption that affects the American people. Coverups, crimes, poaching, you name it. We might seem like a bunch of conspiracy theorists, but we only publish the things we can find some proof for. The FBI has even been involved in some of our stories," Frohike said.

 

Michael nodded, on one hand thinking they were a bunch of lunatics but on the other, wondering if they weren't fighting the same kind of fights, at least partially.

 

"We're here," Byers said, jumping out as Frohike pulled open the sliding door in back to let Michael and Jimmy out.

 

"So, what's your plan?" Byers asked Michael.

 

Michael glanced around the parking lot for inspiration and saw a man selling flowers on the corner. "You guys got a small cardboard box in here?" he asked.

 

Byers pulled one out from under the front seat. It was just about the right size.

 

"You guys wait here,"

 

"Uh-uh," Langly said, crossing his arms.

 

"Okay fine. You guys wait in the lobby. I'll be in in a minute."

 

Michael quickly purchased a bouquet of roses from the man at the cart and managed to beg a vase off him. He slid the flowers into the vase and the vase into the box and then headed into the lobby. He approached the front desk and the pleasant looking woman staffing it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the rest of the crew seated around the lobby.

 

"Hi. I'm with Celebrate Flowers and I have a delivery for Ms. Levow-Hardy. But I don't have a room number. Could you tell me where to deliver it?"

 

The woman looked up suspiciously so he flashed her a smile. “Help a guy out?”

 

"It's against policy, but I guess I can look it up for you."

 

"Thanks. I'd really appreciate it," he said flirting just enough to come across as winning, he hoped.

 

"They're beautiful," she said as she typed something into her computer.

 

"Someone's lucky, I guess."

 

She looked up at him ruefully. "Maybe not. It looks like Ms. Levow-Hardy checked out two days ago. Sorry."

 

Michael tried to keep the disappointment off his face. "All right. Thanks for your help," he said and turned to leave the lobby.

 

*          *          *

 

"So why would your driver take the name Knight?" Yves asked.

 

"Why not?" Kitt asked, trying to deflect any conversation away from Michael while keeping his auditory channels primed for clues to their location. Yves had come back this morning and with barely a word, put something in his trunk and drove them out of the garage. She seemed in the mood to talk now though.

 

"It implies a certain ownership or possession."

 

"What do you mean?" In his mind it implied familial relationship, not ownership, but he didn't want to give anything away.

 

"Knight Industries. Wilton Knight. Why take on the company name? Was there something left to him for taking another's name?"

 

As far as Kitt knew the only thing left to Michael by Wilton was a legacy. But he also knew that Michael hadn't exactly had much say in the matter. His registration and Michael's ID had already been made out in that name before Michael even knew what the legacy really entailed. "I don't believe so."

 

"An odd choice then. It almost sounds like he was marked as property, as surely as you were, Knight Industries Two Thousand."

 

"Michael is not property," Kitt said, his anger getting the best of him.

 

"Not in the strictest sense, no, I would assume not. But there are plenty of ways to have ownership over someone or possession of them in the less strict sense of the word. To be beholden to someone or something."

 

"I assure you that's not the case. Michael is free to make his own choices." But it hadn't always been so. One could look at his first days with the Foundation as coercive. He hadn't asked to be given a new face and identity. He'd been given one and then asked if he indeed wanted it when it was far too late to say no.

 

"Hmmm," was all Yves said. After a pause she said, “And your name? Knight Industries Two Thousand is a bit of a mouthful.”

 

“I’m known by my acronym, KITT.”

 

“And do you consider that your name?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Did you choose it?” Yves asked.

 

“No. But I feel it suits me.”

 

“It’s nice that your creators chose well.” Kitt thought he heard a bit of a snide mockery in her voice. “May I also call you Kitt?”

 

While he wanted to say no, he didn’t see much point in it. “I don’t seem to have much control over what you do,” he responded, petulantly denying her his approval.

 

“True,” she said darkly. “Then Kitt it is.”

 

"What about you? How did you pick your name?" Kitt asked.

 

"It's an anagram."

 

That was slightly comforting. Kitt immediately set about calculating all the possible variations. "Of your real name?" he asked.

 

"No."

 

Kitt looked over all the potential results. "The only name here that would seem to have any significance is Lee Harvey Oswald."

 

"You get another gold star."

 

"Why Oswald?" he asked, puzzled. "Are you an assassin?"

 

"Not usually. And neither was Oswald."

 

"The Warren Commission and most historians disagree with you."

 

"And if the Warren Commission and most historians said the sky was purple, would that make it true?"

 

"Of course not. But why Oswald?"

 

"Because he was going to tell the truth. He was so committed to it that he was willing to risk his life to do so. And they killed him for it."

 

"And what was the truth?" Kitt asked, intrigued.

 

But the only answer she gave him was stony silence.

 

*          *          *

 

Devon was pouring over the police report for the fourth time when the door to the semi opened and Michael appeared. “Ah good, you’re back,” he said.

 

“Have you got something?” he asked hopefully.

 

“Not about Kitt’s whereabouts, no. But the police found Linda Parker,” he said gravely. “Her body was pulled out of the Chesapeake this morning.”

 

Michael let out a frustrated sigh. “You sure?”

 

“Yes. The police compared the fingerprints on the body to the ones taken for her defense clearance. And that’s not all.”

 

Bonnie turned away from her computer and joined the conversation. “The numbers you found in the notebook were to Cayman bank accounts.”

 

“Not something your average whistle blower has.”

 

“No,” said Devon. “We’ve been assuming she was a victim but perhaps we should be looking for clues to her involvement in something illicit.”

 

Michael nodded. “I’ll head back over to her house and take another look.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Anything on Kitt?”

 

Bonnie sighed. “I went as far as I could on tracing that second hack and came up with nothing. The computer security gurus at the Foundation are looking into it as well. I’ve tried everything I can think of to find or communicate with him. There’s just nothing.”

 

She sounded as stricken as Michael felt. He put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll find him,” he said gently.

 

“Michael, you and Kitt weren't even suppose to be here. You came because of Linda. And apparently someone else knew ahead of time that you'd be here." Devon said. "Whoever has Kitt didn't plan this overnight.”

 

Michael cocked his head. "You think Linda was a trap to get us out here."

 

"It would make sense, given the strange nature of this case." Devon put a hand on Michael's arm. "We can't seem to find Kitt directly, but maybe getting to the bottom of this case will lead us to his kidnapper."

 

Michael mulled that over. He was not at all happy about abandoning a more direct search for his partner, but he didn't have much in the way of things to go on. And he had to admit that Devon made a good point. “Okay. So what is Linda doing with a Cayman account?”

 

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Devon said. "I'd say there are two likely avenues. The first being that she is not at all who she says she is and she was planted specifically to get to Kitt."

 

Michael shook his head. "Devon, she's been here too long. She's too established."

 

"The next most obvious supposition is treason.”

 

“She was in the defense industry and perfectly placed to have access to valuable information." Bonnie pointed out. "Maybe she was selling satellite technology to a foreign entity. And now that foreign entity is after Kitt."

 

Michael considered that. “That leads to two possibilities. Either it was a set up from the start and she was playing us, in which case, why kill her? Or she wanted out and legitimately called us for help. Then whoever she was working with got wind of Kitt and decided to use her to get to us."

 

"I wonder when and how our newspaper friends discovered Kitt," Devon asked.

 

"I intend to ask them," Michael said. "Are you guys still looking into this Yves Harlow?"

 

Bonnie looked up at him from her chair. "Of course. But we don't have much to go on. Did you find anything?”

 

“Maybe.” Michael pulled something from his pocket. “I got her picture from Byers. See if you can’t use it to help run down something on her.”

 

Bonnie took the picture and gazed at it thoughtfully. "It's a long shot, but I'll give it a try. I take it they couldn't help you locate her?"

 

“We found where she was staying, but she checked out Wednesday.”

 

“Interesting timing,” Devon remarked.

 

"Yeah." Michael sighed. “If these cases are related, maybe this Yves woman is representing whoever was buying secrets. I’m going to go back to Linda’s and see if I can’t find some connection to Yves.”

 

*          *          *

 

“Yves, I don’t suppose I could convince you to reconnect some of my systems?” Kitt asked.

 

“I doubt it, why?”

 

She sounded certain, even mocking. But he didn’t care. He needed to try. The sensory deprivation was getting to him. “As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m used to taking in a lot more information than this current configuration allows.”

 

“Undoubtedly.”

 

“It’s rather . . . disconcerting to be without that input.”

 

“And?”

 

“I was wondering if you would consider hooking up my video cameras. Currently my systems are in a state equivalent to human blindness.”

 

“And that bothers you?” she asked, the disbelief evident in her voice.

 

“Yes.”

 

“How?”

 

Kitt sighed. “I’m missing critical information. I’m in an unknown place, that I have very limited means of assessing.”

 

“Do you have feelings, Kitt?” Her voice was neutral, but Kitt felt he should tread cautiously.

 

“Yes.”

 

“So you feel happiness, sadness, anger like a human would?”

 

“I can’t say how my feelings compare to a human’s, but I do have feelings, yes.”

 

Kitt heard the faint creaking in his suspension. He guessed that she was either sitting on or resting against his hood.

 

“How is that possible?” she asked. “Are they programmed responses to certain situations?”

 

“I’m not exactly sure. Some of them are indeed programmed, such as my fear of flying. Others seem to have developed over time.”

 

There was a long pause. “You feel fear?” she asked in measured tones.

 

The question chilled him. He instantly regretted revealing that he experienced feelings. But it was too late now. A denial would not dissuade her if she wanted to use that information against him. “Yes,” he said quietly.

 

“You have no palms to get sweaty, no mouth to get dry, no heart to race, and yet you feel fear?”

 

“Fear is a psychological as well as a physiological state in humans is it not?”

 

“It is indeed.” There was another creak in the suspension and then he heard her footsteps circling slowly. "Why would your programmers have included it in your repertoire of emotions? It's a feeling most people would do without. And in your role in law enforcement it would seem counterproductive.”

 

Kitt thought about that for a moment. He had to admit that was probably true on some level. But in other ways it wasn’t. “I believe it's one of the feelings that has grown beyond its original scope. After all, how can an entity experience happy emotions without negative ones to contrast them with?” he asked. “How can you truly care about someone without a fear of losing them?”

 

She stopped moving. “And you do care about anyone?”

 

Kitt knew he was in dangerous territory again. This information could easily be used against him. But he had the feeling that perhaps it would help his captor to see him as more than an artificial being. “Yes. Several people.”

 

She was quiet for a moment. “And if I were to reconnect your video cameras, what purpose would that serve other than to allow you to identify me and this building?”

 

“I can already identify you. Your friends, the newspaper publishers, showed us your picture.”

 

“Then you just want to know your location as a means of escape.”

 

“Even if I do know my location, the car is under your control. There’s nothing I can do to reconnect the cables.”

 

“Then what would be the point?”

 

Kitt had a feeling -- one of Michael’s hunches perhaps -- that he was having an effect on this woman. Maybe being cut off from his technology and sensors was forcing him to pay attention to the human side of things. Or maybe without Michael and his keen knowledge of human interactions to help him, Kitt was being forced to pay more attention to those things himself. But he got the impression that she was starting to see him less as a commodity and more as a sentient being. He had a hunch and he was going to play it to the hilt.

 

“To ease my fear.”

 

*          *          *

 

She should have left the audio cable alone. Yves couldn’t believe that a computer, an AI, had managed to make her feel guilty. Now here she was taking stupid risks. She should just disconnect everything and get on with her plan, but he was getting under her skin.

 

She actually felt sorry for him.

 

Yves opened Kitt’s hood again and was carefully following the cables and comparing them to the schematics. She needed to be careful in how she did this. She did not want to hook up the wrong cable. Especially not now, with Kitt active. She didn’t want to inadvertently give him a chance to call for help.

 

It was funny how quickly ‘it’ had become ‘he’. She had expected something robotic, something like Hal from 2001. But Kitt was nothing like that. He was definitely not an ‘it’.

 

“You said that Oswald knew the truth. What did you mean? What was the truth?” he asked.

 

Yves smiled despite herself. “The million dollar question.”

 

“And I’m a 20 million dollar car. By my calculations, even if you answer the question, I still have 19 million dollars in credit.”

 

He was a plucky little thing, she thought. And his memory banks could always be erased. “Touche. The truth is that Khrushchev wanted an outpost in Cuba, but he didn’t want to part with much of his own military hardware. The Russians had been running short on armaments and production was slow. So they were going to buy stolen Western arms for a song from a black market dealer, and give them to Castro. The missiles sent down there were just a few batteries to start with. A full complement was supposed to follow. As I’m sure you know, the Soviets turned their ships around and gave up on the idea of an outpost. The arms dealer and his organization lost millions on the deal. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy. Kennedy’s assassination was revenge.”

 

The AI scoffed. “How could you possible know that? You probably weren’t even born then.”

 

“Let’s just say that I know a few black market arms dealers.”

 

“You could singlehandedly put the whole Kennedy conspiracy industry out of business by coming forward with that story,” he quipped.

 

Yves let out a slow sigh. “There are some things that just aren’t worth losing your life over.”

 

She plugged in the right cable, dropped the hood, and waited.

 

*          *          *

 

Michael thought about slipping out of the hotel. He thought about sneaking into the parking lot, slinking up to Devon’s rental car, and quickly disappearing out onto the highway. Okay, he did a lot more than think about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the guys. They were fine if a little weird. It was just that he was worried about Kitt. He did not want his efforts to find his partner to be slowed down by having to work with them. So he was going to lose them. That was the plan anyway -- until he spotted the blinking lights in the wheel well of Devon’s rental car. He was going to just move it the car next to his. The thought actually put a smile on his face until he spotted the ancient VW bus lurking at the end of the parking lot. Michael sighed and pounded the heel of his hand on the roof. He knew he'd get more accomplished on his own, but figured he’d still get more done working with them than taking the time to dodge them. So he raised his hand in the air, waving toward the bus. It pulled out of its parking space and rendezvoused with Michael at Devon’s car.

 

“Hey guys,” Michael said. “How are you this morning?”

 

“Good,” Byers said from behind the wheel.

 

Frohike leaned across the front seat. “You weren’t planning on breaking our agreement and leaving us behind, were you?”

 

“Nah. I was just,” he fumbled. “I was just on my way to get some coffee.”

 

“Good,” Frohike said pointedly.

 

“So where are we headed?” Byers asked.

 

Michael sighed. “I was thinking it might be worth going back to the case we were out here investigating. The woman we were trying to find turned up dead yesterday. Maybe it's related. I was going to go back to her house to see if I could find something that would tie her to this Yves woman you know.”

 

“Okay. You wanna hop in?” Byers asked.

 

Michael tried not to sigh. “Nah, why don’t you guys follow me in my car.”

 

He wanted the peace and quiet. He wanted to mull this case over in his mind and he didn’t think it was going to be able to think straight in the cacophonous electronic whir of the VW bus.

 

Actually he really wished Kitt were here to be his sounding board. His logic and calm insight would be invaluable right now.

 

“You aren't going to try to lose us, are you?” Langly asked.

 

“Now why would you think that?” Michael grinned. “It would be kind of hard with the tracking device you put on my car wouldn’t it?”

 

Byers and Frohike shared a look. “We’ll follow you, Knight.”

 

“Call me Michael,” he said, and popped into the car.

 

*          *          *

 

He could see! Well, after a fashion anyway, Kitt could see. Yves had reconnected his infrared sensors. It wasn’t a very detailed view of the world but he could actually have some sense of where he was. It appeared to be a large room, judging by the neat right angles the electrical wires made in the walls. And Yves herself appeared to be walking away, down what was probably a short hallway. After a few minutes she stopped and took a seat in another room.

 

But he hadn’t realized just how relieving it would be to get some of his sight back. He was more or less used to short periods of sensory deprivation when his CPU was disconnected from the car, but not like this. Normally, he was safe with Bonnie when he was in that configuration and she was very good about making sure she hooked him up to a feed and kept him informed. It was at least useful that Yves had been talking to him, but she was not to be trusted and the stress of having almost no input had been wearing on him constantly.

 

Relief rushed through him, although it was tempered. He could see and he would have a better idea of what was going on around him, but he was still basically helpless. He still needed to find a way out of this predicament. The sooner the better.

 

*          *          *

 

Linda Parker’s house was basically as Michael had left it last time. He and the guys had fanned out into the various rooms, looking for something, anything to tie her to Yves. Michael had to admit he really didn’t have any idea what he was looking for. He wasn’t even sure that he’d recognize it when he saw it.

 

“Guys,” Langly said from the living room. “Does it strike anyone else as odd that this woman was in the defense industry, working on spy satellites, and she doesn’t have a computer?”

 

They all congregated in the living room.

 

“Maybe she doesn’t like to bring her work home,” Byers suggested.

 

“Or maybe she had a computer and it’s missing?” Michael said, glancing around the room.

 

Langly peeked out from the bedroom. “I don’t see anything that suggests a computer. No desk, no cables, no printer.”

 

“What if she had a laptop?” Frohike suggested.

 

Michael set down the stack of envelopes he'd been flipping through. He and Kitt had been over this place before but at the time the check had been cursory. He needed to adjust his thinking. Before he had been looking for someone who was a whistleblower -- an innocent citizen trying to right some wrong. But she had a Caribbean bank account. It was unlikely that she was completely innocent. He needed to start thinking like he was investigating something suspicious.

 

While the guys looked for evidence of a computer, he started scouring the living room, looking along the edges of picture frames, turning over the desk drawers. Then he wandered into the bedroom. He noticed a small lock box in Linda’s closet. There was a combination lock with a small spin dial on its face. He'd raised his comlink to his lips to ask Kitt for help before remembering that Kitt wasn’t there.

 

Michael took the box back out to the living room. “Hey guys. In that van of yours, I don’t suppose you have anything that would help me figure out a combination?” he asked.

 

Frohike gave the box a once over. “Yeah, I think we’ve got something that might help.” The group trooped back out to the VW bus and pulled open the side door. Frohike rummaged around in the back before producing a small gadget. He pressed it against the box and started very slowly turning the dial. Red LEDs began to flash with each number. Finally one flashed green. Frohike stopped and switched directions on the lock. It took several minutes, but Frohike finally got the last number and lifted the lid. He started pulling items out and handing them to Michael. First was a manila a folder. He rifled through it, finding a passport and other documentation in the name Victoria Wright. The picture in the passport looked like Linda. He passed all that off to Langly. Then Frohike passed him a little black calendar. Michael opened it with interest and began paging back from the day Linda had disappeared. There were initials penned in on several of the appointment lines. He was going back looking for patterns when Frohike said, “Uh, guys?”

 

He looked up to see a thick bundle of hundred dollar bills in Frohike's hand. “There are a lot of these down here at the bottom."

 

Langly whistled and Byers looked over at Michael. “Maybe you should tell us what you know about this woman. Maybe we can find something that might help.”

 

*          *          *

 

“Are you going to sell me?” he asked. It was the obvious question and Yves hated the rush of sympathy she felt. So what if that were her plan?

 

“What makes you think that?” she asked, dodging the question.

 

“You’re a thief and I’ve been stolen. I assume your intent is to sell me.”

 

“’Stolen’ is a very interesting choice of words. Property, belongings are stolen. Human beings are kidnapped.”

 

“I’m not human.”

 

“But do you consider yourself property?”

 

“Legally speaking I am property.”

 

“Legally speaking, yes, but do you think that description fits?” It was an ugly idea, one she felt too close to.

 

“No. However in this case, what I think my description should be probably doesn’t matter as much as what those around me think it is.”

 

“And the people who ‘own’ you, do they see you as property?”

 

“The people I work with closely, the people who’ve gotten to know me, no, I don’t believe they do. But those who don’t know me well probably do see me as property, yes.”

 

Yves crossed her arms. “And those you work closely with, do they protect you?”

 

“Yes. They’re like family.”

 

Yves couldn’t help the flare of anger. “Do they care for you, cherish you?   Do they love you?” she asked fighting the lump in her throat. “Or are you just a tool to them, an instrument to do their bidding?”

 

“I think they love me, yes,” he said softly. “I belong to them, but not as property.”

 

Yves let out a frustrated sigh and bit back the hollowness that moved up her throat from her chest. She carried an empty void that even this artificial creature had filled. She didn't want to go any further down this path. “Thief is not a description I would use for myself. I thieve from thieves. I steal things to keep them away from the people who shouldn’t have them in the first place. I even sometimes return things to the people they were stolen from. And yes, I often make money by selling things or collecting sizable rewards.”

 

“Legally speaking, a thief.”

 

“Legally speaking, yes.”

 

“So why did you steal me?”

 

“I didn’t.” She sighed. “As I said, I’m borrowing you.”

 

He was quiet for a minute. “Most people don’t always mean exactly what they say. Especially with words like ‘borrow.’”

 

Yves was tired and she still had a lot of things to go over. “No. Most people don’t.” She flipped off the light and left the garage

 

*          *          *

 

Langly had a good hack going. He was digging around in the FBI's databases, finding quite a few hits on Veronica Wright. The name appeared to be connected to several other aliases, and even the FBI didn't know if any of them were real. But at least two of them were wanted in connection with the international black arms market.

 

"Some interesting stuff here, but nothing definitive," he said, tapping away at his keyboard.

 

Knight was sitting with Frohike and Byers at the table, going over Linda's calendar with a fine tooth comb.

 

"Same here," Frohike said. "I mean normal people don't use just the initials of their friends in their calendars. That doesn't give us much to go on."

 

"There's really only one consistent set of initials -- DM. If we could find out who that is, we'd have something." Byers suggested. "Langly, are there any known associations between Linda and anyone with those initials?"

 

Langly skimmed through the files again. "Nah, nothing here."

 

"Even if we could figure out who DM is, how would we find him or her? We've got a date and time for an upcoming meeting but not a place," Frohike said, eyeing the book.

 

"We've got two days to figure it out -- assuming whoever it is hasn't discovered that Linda’s dead,” Knight added.

 

“Assuming he or she wasn’t responsible for her death in the first place.” Byers gave them all his raised eyebrow look.

 

Knight reached over and picked up the phone on the desk. He punched in a few numbers and waited while it rang. “Hey, Bonnie, can you get me anything and everything on the letters DM as they relate to Linda Parker? Thanks." He hung up and glanced around the room at the rest of the guys. "We might as well use every resource we've got."

 

"Speaking of which," Langly said, seeing his opening. "What is the story on that car of yours? How many more of them have you got?"

 

"It's the only one," Knight said. But Langly heard the moment of hesitation before he answered. From the look that Frohike shot him he'd heard it too.

 

"You mean to tell me that a car that's remote controlled and capable of jumping over traffic is the only one in existence?"

 

"What, you couldn't get the production line fired up fast enough?" Frohike jabbed.

 

Knight laughed and rolled his eyes. It seemed to Langly like he was sharing an inside joke with someone. "You may have noticed, it's not exactly a late model Trans Am. There's only one, guys. That's why we want . . . it back."

 

"But why?" Byers asked. "Why make one car that can do all that? What's the point?"

 

Knight looked around their headquarters. "Why do you guys do all this? Why do you put out a paper that very few people read? Why do you research stories about the government doing things behind the backs of its citizens? Why bother?"

 

"To make a difference, man," Langly said, standing up and approaching Knight. "We believe in the American way. In truth, justice, and all of that. How can we be a free society when people in the government hide things?"

 

"Some things need to be hidden," Knight said, shrugging.

 

"Yeah, well, the government hides too much. We want people to be informed, to know what's going on. How can you change things for the better if people don't even know what needs to be changed?"

 

Knight nodded. "The Foundation believes in justice too. That car was built to help bring justice to people who have no one else to help them. The man who conceived of it had designs stolen from him and there was no way for him to bring the people responsible to justice. He tried to go to the authorities, but the people who stole his work were too big, too powerful for the authorities to even consider going after. So he created a way to go after those kinds of criminals."

 

"So you are vigilantes," Frohike said.

 

Knight shook his head. "We only bring these people in. At that point we turn them over to the same justice system that everyone else has to work with. We aren't playing the roles of judge, jury, and executioner. We're just helping to catch them."

 

"And breaking a few laws in the process?"

 

Knight's gaze swept around the room. "And you guys aren't breaking any laws to get the truth out?"

 

There was an uncomfortable silence that Byers finally filled. "So why the car?"

 

"To help keep me safe. To give me a leg up."

 

"And the government hasn't come after it?"

 

"Oh they were interested at first. But Wilton Knight told them no."

 

Langly snorted. "What, and they just went away?"

 

"Sure. You think the Defense Department doesn't already have these kinds of capabilities."

 

Frohike cracked his knuckles. "Good point."

 

Byers gave Knight a pointed look. "So, any truth to the rumor that this car is an artificial intelligence?"

 

"You see anything that looks like artificial intelligence at that conference?"

 

"No," Langly said. "But I also don't see any other jumping, remote controlled cars."

 

"That I'll give you. It is one of a kind," he said smiling. “But where did you hear that it was an artificial intelligence?”

 

“We have a tip line,” Langly shrugged. “Something came in.”

 

“From who?”

 

“It was a fairly sophisticated anonymous email. Said you’d be at the conference and said the car housed an AI.”

 

“Any chance I can have someone at the Foundation look at it. See if they can figure out where it came from?”

 

Langly looked at Frohike. “Normally we respect the privacy of our informants,” Frohike said.

 

“The car’s been stolen, guys, and nothing about this situation adds up.”

 

Frohike nodded to Langly who brought up the email and showed it to Knight. He gave them an email address at the Foundation and Langly sent it off.

 

Michael drummed his fingers on the desk. He wanted to follow up all possible leads as quickly as possible. "So, any other ways to track down this Yves?"

 

"I'm still running a hack into the reservations systems of most of the local hotels. We should know if she checks in anywhere else in the metro DC area," Langly said.

 

"Does she have a base of operations?" Knight asked.

 

"Not that we've been able to find," Byers said.

 

"Then I guess it's back to Linda Parker in the meantime," Knight said giving them each a look.

 

*          *          *

 

The trees were closing in tightly around the road. Yves was keeping them on back roads, off the highways. Kitt had nothing to do but watch as the scenery passed them by. It was an entirely new experience for him – simply watching as a passive observer. Even when Michael was driving there were things for him to do. Research for their case, or plotting the shortest route or just keeping Michael company. Yves sat in silence behind the wheel.

 

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to tell me where we’re going or what you're going to do when we get there?” he asked.

 

She looked off, out of the corner of her eyes. There was a slight smile playing on her lips, but her voice seemed sad. “We’re going to New York. I’m going to check on some arrangements and then we’re going to meet someone.”

 

“Someone of the criminal persuasion?”

 

“Someone who’s dedicated his life to being a criminal, yes.”

 

“Then why are going to meet him?”

 

His question was met with silence. He wished there was an easier way of getting information from her. He seemed to have to come at things from oblique angles to get her to answer. Kitt wasn’t sure what good it was going to be to know, but he wanted as much information as possible. He wanted to be prepared.

 

“Are you going to sell me to him? Or turn me over to him?” he asked trying to sound worried. She seemed to react more openly when he was asking about his own well-being.

 

“No.” She paused long enough that Kitt didn’t think she was going to say any more. “You’re the bait to lure him out,” she said softly.

 

“Why?”

 

“Remember the arms dealer I told you about?”

 

“The one who had Kennedy killed?”

 

“Yes. He has acquired 6 RA-115 tactical nuclear weapons – so called suitcase nukes. He was able to smuggle them into the United States for a buyer who’s offered a hefty price for them. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to out bid the buyer so I came up with another plan. This arms dealer is a terrorist but he doesn’t have any politics of his own. He simply sells to the highest bidder. But there is something he loves - power and prestige. So having something unique, something that no on else in the world has, is too big a temptation for him to resist.”

 

“You offered him an AI in exchange for the weapons.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Are you going to turn me over to him?”

 

Yves sighed. “No. I hope to get the nukes away from him and get out of there.”

 

“And then what?” Kitt asked.

 

“The nukes will last several years if they have a power source. They have a built in battery back up which I intend to disable to render them useless.”

“They’ll still contain radioactive material that could be used to make a dirty bomb or otherwise be used to harm people.”

 

“I know. I was thinking I would drop them off with the US Department of Energy.”

 

“You were planning to just drive in and drop them off?” Kitt asked incredulously.

 

“No. I have no desire to go to prison. But I was thinking a little late night visit to the office of the Secretary of Energy would be a poetic way of dealing with them.”

 

Kitt thought about it. “The headquarters of the DOE is in Washington DC, but I’m sure it has extensive security.”

 

“Ahhh, but I have a very resourceful AI housed in a very versatile car at my disposal. And his office probably has less security than many of the other parts of the building.”

 

“Yves, this all sounds like a very dangerous plan.”

 

“Then you can probably see why your capabilities attracted me nearly as much as your usefulness as bait.”

 

“How did you find out about me?” Kitt asked.

 

“One of my contacts was in prison for a while and had a cellmate who talked about a talking car that was responsible for putting him away.”

 

“What was his name?”

 

Yves smiled. “I don’t like to give away my sources. And it doesn’t matter much who because it appears there are many people who know about you. Once I started digging, it wasn’t hard to find out at least the basics.”

 

“And you got the details by hacking into the Foundation’s network.” It was a statement more than a question.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Did you tip off the newspaper men?”

 

Yves laughed. “Unfortunately, I underestimated the Foundation’s network security and didn’t get out clean. I figured a little misdirection would allow me to finish getting what I needed without getting caught.”

 

“And how did you know we’d be here? Michael and I weren’t even planning on coming to Washington, DC.”

 

This time her smile was real but a bit bitter. “The woman who called you wasn’t Linda Parker.”

 

“You called us?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But Linda did disappear.”

 

“True. I blew her cover. She was selling satellite technology to the arms dealer. Once she knew someone was coming to investigate, she had to get out of there.”

 

Kitt was quiet for a moment, going over the possibilities. “Yves. I just have one more question.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“If this arms dealer was willing to have a president assassinated, what’s he going to do to you when you double cross him?”

 

She looked down. “Some things aren’t worth losing your life over, Kitt. But other things are.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 

 

The guys were all pouring over their computers when Knight announced that he needed some air. He went out back and Byers immediately caught Frohike's eye. They went to the kitchen, ostensibly to throw together some sandwiches.

 

"I'm starting to think our informant was right," Byers said barely above a whisper.

 

"What do you mean?" Frohike used the same conspiratorial volume.

 

"Langly doesn't believe it because he doesn't want to, but I think there's more to that car than Knight is telling us."

 

"You think it's an AI?"

 

"Maybe. Have you noticed how he hesitates every time he uses the pronoun 'it' to describe the car?"

 

"Yeah, but I assumed he didn't want to use the colloquial 'she' for some reason."

 

"Listen to him when he talks about it. He sounds fond of it."

 

"Jimmy's fond of his car too," Frohike whispered dismissively. He pulled the bread out of the fridge and let the door slam shut.   Then he pulled some plates out of the cabinets, letting them clank together.

 

"Knight's not Jimmy," Byers said with a raised eyebrow. "And somehow I don't think a remote controlled car by itself would be enough to get Yves' attention, even if it could jump over things without a ramp."

 

"Yeah, okay, you've got a point. But why would they hide it for so long? They're a company, why wouldn't they start making them by the thousands or selling off the technology in bits and pieces? Artificial intelligence could make them millions -- not to mention fame and glory for the scientists who made it happen."

 

"You heard him talk about wanting to make a difference."

 

"Yeah, but AI could do that. Think of all the good that could come of it."

 

"And think of all the bad," Byers said pointedly. "Think of Terminator or 2001. Think of Bicentennial Man." Byers paused. "I think Knight cares about this AI. This car. I think that's why he's so eager to find it. And I think that's why they don't sell the technology."

 

"What, because they're fond of it?" Frohike snorted.

 

"Exactly. Think about it. Imagine you're a scientist and you're on the verge of creating a real AI. Maybe you think about the potential drawbacks, but you do it anyway. Be it for the fame or the glory or just the pure scientific discovery of it. Say you’re successful. You realize it's a sentient being, maybe with needs, desires, and an agenda of its own. You start to see it as alive. But you know that legally speaking, it has no rights. You know that if other people start to create AIs, they may not treat them as well as you have. You may worry about what will happen to your AI when you're dead and gone. So you don't want anyone to know about it to protect what you've come to see as a being, not a project."

 

"Byers, you've put way too much thought into this."

 

"Maybe, but just watch him. He's not looking to recover stolen property. He's _worried_ about that car."

 

"Okay. If you're right, what do you want to do?" he asked slathering a piece of bread with margarine.

 

Byers shrugged. "Help him find his AI."

 

*          *          *

 

Kitt was awash in confusion. He had been the victim of a kidnapping, his systems had been disabled, and he had been taken away from what he considered his family. And here he was considering helping the very person who had kidnapped him. He knew about Stockholm syndrome. He knew that kidnappees often started to relate to and empathize with their captors. But he was an AI. He wasn’t sure it was even possible to develop a syndrome of this or any other kind. And he was pretty sure that even if it were possible, that wasn’t what was going on here.

 

Yes, Yves had kidnapped him and blinded all his sensors, cut him off from everything. But he was starting to think that he understood why. If she was to be believed, she was fighting the same sort of battle that the Foundation routinely fought. She was trying to go up against someone who was untouchable. If she was right about the nuclear weapons then Kitt was in wholehearted agreement that this man had to be stopped.

 

The thing that baffled him was that he did believe her. He had no reason to – not after what she’d done. But she just seemed sincere. He _believed_ that she was telling the truth.

 

And if she was telling the truth, then he did want to help her.

 

*          *          *

 

"All right, guys, I think I might have something," Langly said as they all crowded around his computer. "Linda worked for Maricrafters. One of their satellite designs was apparently sold to the Chinese."

 

"Right. That was big news a year or two ago," Frohike said.

 

"But no one was able to prove how the information was transferred. No link to the Chinese was ever found."

 

"Okay, so you think that Linda was dealing directly with the Chinese?"

 

"No," Langly said, dramatically hitting a button on his computer. "I think she was dealing with someone the British had their eye on."

 

"Okay, you lost me," Jimmy said.

 

"For once, I'm right there with you," Byers said glancing at him.

 

"According to this memo," Langly said gesturing to his screen. "The scandal was broken using information provided by MI5."

 

Frohike frowned. "But MI5 is British internal intelligence, not foreign intelligence."

 

"Exactly." Langly grinned smugly. "The British had their eye on someone in their own consulate. An attaché named Trevor Cornelius who was apparently meeting with his Chinese counterpart quite frequently. He was removed from his post, but never charged."

 

"They couldn't figure out who his source was," Byers speculated.

 

"Linda." Knight had a very intense look on his face. It almost reminded Byers of Mulder when he was chewing on a problem. Although Knight was nowhere near as broody.

 

"Maybe, but I'm guessing there was another go between. Another layer of deception. And I'm betting it's one of his contacts from the consulate," Langly said.

 

"Why?"

 

"Consulates deal with business people. So Cornelius would have had a whole list of legitimate contacts he'd meet on a regular basis, but they'd be British citizens."

 

"And Linda's not," Knight said. “Is Yves?”

 

“We don’t know, but she does have the accent for it,” said Byers.

 

Michael thought for a moment. "Can you look to see if anyone has the initials DM?"

 

"Already done, my friend. One David Martin."

 

"It’s not an anagram," Byers pointed out. “And it’s a conspicuously male name.”

 

"Maybe it's not Yves," Jimmy suggested.

 

"It wouldn't be the first time she poached on an existing operation. But we could check him out and at least see if there's a connection to Linda Parker." Frohike cracked his knuckles.

 

Knight looked around the room. "It's worth a shot."

 

*          *          *

 

Kitt heard the clicking of Yves’s heels and spotted the glow of heat as she entered the garage. “Hello, Yves,” he said pleasantly.

 

“Hello. You’re chipper this morning,” she said moving around the front of the car. She opened the driver's door and slid inside.

 

“There’s something I wanted to ask you before we go,” he said, uncertainly.

 

She didn’t say anything which Kitt took to be his cue to go on.

 

“Yves, I don’t want to see you get hurt. And if what you say is true, you’re walking into a dangerous situation.”

 

“It is true.”

 

“Then I want to help. If you give me access to the car’s functions, I’ll help you get the weapons.”

 

She laughed. “Oh really? Why would you want to help me?”

 

“Because I don’t want to see those weapons in the hands of the wrong people.”

 

“It would have nothing to do with you trying to get away then?”

 

“Yves, I know that giving me access to my systems is a risk, but I guarantee that I am not planning an escape. I want to help. These are the kinds of cases that Michael and I normally investigate. We’re working on the same side.”

 

“And of course while you have access to your systems, you wouldn’t contact your friends? Tell them where you are?”

 

She obviously didn't believe him. “Not if you agree to let me go after you’ve taken care of the weapons.”

 

“I’m sorry, Kitt, but I can’t risk that this is just a ploy to get away. I need you.”

 

“I know that. And it’s too important an issue for me to worry about getting away. Yves, if what you’ve said about this arms dealer is true, then you're going to be in grave danger. I don’t want to see you get hurt. And I don’t want those nuclear weapons used against innocent people. Believe me, we have the same goals. I can help. We stand a better chance of being successful if we work together.”

 

She sighed. “I can’t take that risk.”

 

“I assure you, this is not subterfuge on my part.”

 

“I wish I could believe that,” she said, forlornly.

 

“Yves, let me help you. If you want, you can just give me back the basic control of the car and my sensors. Leave my long range communications disabled. I won’t contact the Foundation, although, I do believe that we could help you. I’ll honor your wishes to handle this alone.”

 

“Kitt, if you leave, you’ll sentence hundreds if not thousands of people to die a horrible death.”

 

Kitt was heartened that she was at least considering it. “I believe that. And I cannot jeopardize even one life, let alone thousands. I am programmed to protect all human life. I am honor bound to help. You’ve gained access to the Foundation’s network, you’ve seen my design documentation, surely you must know that.”

 

She didn’t say anything.

 

“If I have access to my systems I can protect you, scan the people involved, be sure that we recover all the weapons, and watch your back. You’ll be much safer with me watching out for you.”

 

She didn’t say anything.

 

“Yves. I won’t leave. You have to trust someone. Trust me.”

 

“It would take too long to sort out all your cabling to hook up specific systems. I'll have to hook up everything.” She opened the door again. “If I even think you're doing anything other than helping me, I have the power to destroy your CPU. Your friends will never get here in time.”

 

“You won't have any reason to.”

 

She stared down at the voice modulator. “Okay.”

 

*          *          *

 

Frohike glanced Knight’s direction as he waved his hand. The garage to David Martin’s house was empty, the lights in the house were off, and based on the wave, Knight hadn’t seen any indication of an alarm system when he’d looked in the windows. He and Frohike were wearing shirts and hats from a fictitious lawn service which was fine while they were in the yard but would arouse more suspicion than it would deflect if anyone actually saw them going in or out. The house was far enough away from the neighbors and set back from the road enough that being spotted wasn’t particularly likely. Still, Frohike had to shrug off the trepidation he typically felt in these situations. It was never possible to be completely prepared for all possible scenarios.

 

Frohike approached the back door cautiously and pulled a pick from inside his fingerless leather gloves. In less than 10 seconds, he was in. Knight watched the street for a moment and then followed. The living room was immaculate and well appointed. The Martins might have used Scully’s interior decorator. Frohike was already to the stairs, headed to the second floor to plant three bugs. Knight had three of his own to plant on the main level. Frohike affixed one bug to the underside of the nightstand in the bedroom and one inside the phone. He was placing a wireless camera in a heavy, ornate mirror frame in the hallway when Knight appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

 

“Got them all placed, Michael?” he asked.

 

Michael flashed him a thumbs up and Frohike took out his radio. “Eagle to Apollo, do you read me?”

 

There was a crackle and hiss and then they heard Byers’ voice say, “We hear you loud and clear.”

 

“Are the baby birds singing?”

 

“Like the cast of Miss Saigon,” Byers replied.

 

Frohike followed Knight out the back. They rounded the corner of the house and Frohike placed one more camera in a bush facing the picture window. Then they walked across the lawn like they belonged there. They met the bus at the curb and found a quiet little street two blocks over to wait for the Martins to come home.

 

*          *          *

 

The bus was cramped and hot from all the whirring electronic equipment and the white noise was grating on Michael’s nerves. He would never again complain about going on a stake out with Kitt.

 

Assuming they found him.

 

Michael leaned forward to stretch his back. Byers was up front, sitting low in the driver's seat, watching through the windshield. Frohike was watching the house through the crazy periscope contraption that came down from the ceiling. Langly was tapping away on a laptop which left Jimmy and Michael to stare at a pair of tiny black and white TV screens fed by the wireless cameras. Michael was hot, tired, and frustrated. Stake outs were trying at the best of times. And this was not.

 

"Wait, wait. I think I see something. Yeah. There's definitely something going on inside," Jimmy said, leaning into the tiny monitor, his face inches from the screen. Michael leaned back in time to see the woman, David Martin’s wife, snap the blinds shut.

 

"Nevermind," Jimmy said, crestfallen. Michael had quickly discovered that Jimmy was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He also noticed that most of the time, the other men didn’t bother to look up when he said something.

 

As they watched, the woman who'd been at the window opened the front door and jaunted to her car, keys jangling in her hand, a bag flung over her shoulder.

 

"She's on the move," Byers said. "Follow her or stick with him?"

 

"Stick with him," Michael said. "He was the one with the contact."

 

The woman's Mercedes roared out of the driveway and the house was quiet for a while. Frohike had been wearing a pair of headphones and he suddenly turned away from his periscope and clutched the phones to his ears. "We’ve got an outgoing call."

 

Langly reached up and hit a few buttons on the rack next to Michael. A few lights flickered and then held. Michael assumed it was recording the signal coming from the bug that was feeding Frohike's headphones. This was all so much easier with Kitt. Michael hadn't even realized how much he'd been taking his partner for granted.

 

They all watched Frohike for a few seconds and then his eyes went wide and he gestured to the rack frantically, finally falling over Jimmy's shoulder to hit a switch that turned on a speaker. They all heard a man's voice, clearly British. It was frantic sounding and laced with fear.

 

_"I told you, I need to get out of here"_

_"You're fine. There's no reason to panic."_

_"I told you that if anything went wrong, I wanted out. Linda’s dead. I want to go back to London. As soon as possible."_

There was a pause and then the gruff voice on the other end sighed.

 

_"Meet me at 3:30 tomorrow. The usual place. I'll have plane tickets and new identities for you and your wife."_

_"But what if the authorities make the connection? I want to leave tonight!"_

_"It takes time to arrange these things. Just lay low. You’ll get your tickets."_

_"Tickets to where?"_

_"Not London. Somewhere with a favorable extradition policy. You'll be taken care of."_

 

The Brit sighed, the stress in his voice plainly evident. _"Okay. Three thirty."_

Michael glanced at Frohike. They now had a deadline.

 

 

*          *          *

 

Kitt was drowning in data. After being without it for so long, he was almost overloaded. And it was exhilarating. Instead of his processor sitting all but idle, it was now analyzing, calculating, and surveying. They were twenty miles outside of New York City and closing. He had to admit, he had been sorely tempted to send a communication to Michael. Kitt knew Michael would be worried, but he needed to keep his word to Yves – he needed her to trust him. If all went well, he hoped he’d be back to Michael by tomorrow at this time.

 

If all went well.

 

And right now, that was hardly assured.

 

Yves was driving because she hadn’t yet told him where they were going. Although she hadn’t relinquished control of the car, she was no longer watching him so warily, as though she expected to find the authorities tailing them at any moment. She had stopped eyeing her frequency monitor with such alarming regularity. Kitt took those as good signs.

 

He was catching up on local news reports when something caught his attention. “Linda Parker’s body was discovered in the Chesapeake Bay last night,” he said pointedly.

 

“Oh?” Yves asked. Kitt assumed the interest was feigned.

 

“Did you kill her?” he asked.

 

“No.”

 

“But you know who did.”

 

Yves smiled. It was callous and bitter. “I have a few ideas.”

 

“She died because you called us, didn’t she?” he accused.

 

“Linda was involved in a very deadly organization. She knew the stakes. She was stealing from the Defense Department and aiding an organization in selling secrets to the Chinese. When I called the Foundation, it blew her cover.” she said matter-of-factly.

 

“So it doesn’t bother you that she’s dead?”

 

“Not really. Should it?”

 

“Human life is valuable.”

 

“She’s a criminal, Kitt. Would I have preferred not to get her killed? Maybe. But I’m not going to shed any tears over her.”

 

“You work with a brutal sets of rules,” he observed.

 

“I didn’t make them.”

 

“There is another thing, Yves. I notice that you have a gun in your bag,” he said flatly.

 

“Yes.”

 

“As you’re aware, I can’t take a human life.”

 

Yves raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t your partner carry a gun?”

 

“Not usually. He’s used one from time to time, but not as a general rule.”

 

“It would seem that’s a dangerous position for him to be in.”

 

“I’m usually there to protect him.”

 

“Usually, but not always.”

 

“True.”

 

“You wouldn’t catch me trying to track down dangerous criminals without a weapon.”

 

“I guess we have different perspectives.”

 

“I guess we do. But the men we’re going to meet are very dangerous and I need to protect myself. I appreciate your help, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to depend on you entirely.”

 

“Michael does.”

 

“That’s fine for Michael.”

 

There was an awkward pause.

 

“Who are we meeting?” Kitt asked when it was clear she wasn’t going to say anymore. “The arms dealer himself?”

 

“No. He lives in the U.K. I don’t think there’s any temptation that would get him to leave. He’s safe there. He’s bribed enough officials and knows where the bodies are buried. If he leaves, then he’s vulnerable to Interpol and a host of other agencies who'd like to get their hands on him.”

 

“If you give me his name, I can find out what Interpol knows, maybe get some information on his organization that could help us.”

 

Yves was staring sullenly out the window. “I know plenty about his organization,” she said darkly.

 

“Yes, but it would be helpful if I could be quickly brought up to speed.”

 

She sighed deeply. “His name is Phillip Runtz.”

 

Kitt quickly accessed everything and anything he could. Runtz was well known to Interpol as an arms smuggler and his organization operated in a least 18 countries. He was known for ruthlessly dispatching enemies, turn coats, and the families of uncooperative authorities. He lived in the UK but for various reasons, authorities had never gotten anything to stick long enough to bring him in. In many ways, his organization was very similar to the mob.

 

And there was something else interesting in his personal information.

 

“Lois, I presume,” Kitt said carefully.

 

Yves glared down at the Voice Modulator. “I prefer Yves.”

 

“I don’t blame you,” Kitt said. “It must be very difficult to have a man like that as a father.”

 

“What would you know about it? You don’t have a father,” she said coolly.

 

“I may not have a father in the traditional sense, but there was a man who was my creator.”

 

“And was he good and noble and nice?” she asked.

 

Kitt was only slightly put off by the bitter sarcasm in her voice. “Good and noble, yes, I think so. But nice is not an adjective I typically hear people use to describe him.” Kitt paused. “He died shortly after I was completed.”

 

“I would have preferred that. When other girls my age were learning to ride horses, I was learning to get past security systems and assemble automatic weapons. While my friends were going out on their first dates, I was going on my first assignments. My father has never seen me as anything but a tool to be used in his never ending quest for power and money.”

 

“What about your mother?” he asked gently.

 

“She was foolish enough to stick with him. She was willing to put up with anything to maintain the lifestyle she was accustomed to.”

 

“I’m very sorry.”

 

She shrugged, the anger seeming to fade. “When she died, I got out. I told an agent in London that I was willing to testify. They put me in their version of the Witness Protection Program. As soon as their backs were turned, I hacked into one of my father’s bank accounts and left the country with a sizable chunk of his wealth. I can’t say that having been trained in my father’s organization hasn’t been useful at times.”

 

“And you’ve been on your own since?”

 

“Yes. I left when I was 19.”

 

“I take it he’s never caught up with you?”

 

“He’s sent his thugs after me. But for whatever reason he seems to want them to take me alive. More than one has been close enough to take a shot, but they haven’t yet.”

 

“Do you know why?”

 

“He either wants to kill me himself, ask me why I betrayed him, or maybe buried in there somewhere he has some sense of familial loyalty.”

 

“Perhaps he cares for you in his own way.”

 

“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug that didn’t quite carry the nonchalance that Yves probably thought it did. “Now you know the sordid story of my family history.”

 

“My family isn’t all goodness and nobility either, Yves.”

 

She arched an eyebrow. “Oh really?”

 

“I'm actually the second Knight Industries AI. The first was not successful.”

 

“Not successful how?”

 

“He was deemed a failure because his core programming was too concerned with self-preservation.”

 

Yves smiled cynically. “The desire for self-preservation seems pretty universal among sentient beings.”

 

“Yes. However, when the sentient being in question is a nearly indestructible vehicle and has no qualms about taking human life in order to avoid damage, it creates a bit of a problem.”

 

“I see your point.”

 

“Michael and I had to destroy him.”

 

Yves looked down sharply at the Voice Modulator. “Was he the only other AI to exist?”

 

“To the best of my knowledge, yes.”

 

“Was that hard for you? Being responsible for his destruction?”

 

“I wish there had been another way. But I did what had to be done.”

 

“That’s a rather evasive way of answering.”

 

“Yes. It was very difficult. KARR was very angry at being abandoned by Wilton Knight. He did things he shouldn’t have done. He was a danger to others.”

 

“But he was your family. He was the only other one in the world who had ever known what it was like to be an AI,” she said softly.

 

“Yes.”   Kitt didn’t know why he was telling her all this. It was something he normally kept to himself. Michael didn’t see KARR the way he did. He’d mentioned it once but Michael didn’t really seem to understand. “I always wanted and never got a chance to really talk to him. I could see the world through his eyes. I could understand why he felt hurt and abandoned. He was what he was programmed to be and at his core, he was a mistake.” Kitt sighed slightly. “I have always been one of a kind, unique, and usually that’s a source of pride for me, but I would give that up to have someone else who could really understand what it’s like to be an artificial intelligence in a world of humans. It would have been nice not to be alone.”

 

Yves nodded slowly. “Maybe someday you won’t be.”

 

“Maybe.” But he hadn't meant to get sidetracked. They had a job to do. “So if we won’t be meeting your father, then who will we be meeting?”

 

“A man named Nolan Cook. He’s a snake through and through. I’m sure he plans to double cross me.”

 

Kitt ran through all the data he had on Cook. As Devon would say, he was a most unsavory character. “Do you have a plan?”

 

“I was planning to stun him with this,” she said, pulling a small device out of her purse. "It’s an ultrasonic stun gun. It sends out a high volume tone that will stun anyone who hears it.” She tapped her earring. “These are speakers with noise cancelling technology. The only problem is that it only has a range of 10 meters and it’s limited to one blast per charge.”

 

“So if he has any men stationed as lookouts or snipers, you’re in trouble.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

*          *          *

 

They had followed Martin the rest of the day. They’d tailed him to his office, watched him at lunch, and kept a discreet distance as they followed him home again. It had been a long time since Michael had run a surveillance mission like this. He'd picked up the rental car that he’d parked on another block. Frohike had given him a radio and they'd tag-teamed Martin through the streets of Baltimore. Michael was used to having Kitt's scanners -- it had been a long time since he'd only had his own skills to rely on. While Martin had lunch he and the guys all fanned out to watch him in shifts. Michael was finding that this was a part of police work that he missed. Despite some of the aspects of his physique that made him stand out, he'd always been good at surveillance and he missed the cat-and-mouse game.

 

Now they were sitting outside Martin’s house again. His wife had come home and as far as they could tell, the two of them had eaten dinner, and then turned on the TV. There was a ghostly blue glow escaping from around the edges of the family room blinds, leaking out into the street. An hour ago Martin’s wife had gone upstairs and was playing classical music.

 

Langly and Byers were sleeping in the front of the van, assuming that they would take a shift in the wee hours. Michael, Frohike, and Jimmy were in the back. The three of them switched between watching the house and listening for phone calls. For a while Michael had been concerned that they'd been made. The van wasn't exactly inconspicuous. Even using the rental car for most of the morning, an alert person would have noticed that the VW bus kept showing up.   An hour ago, Michael had seen the corner of the blinds move slightly, as though someone was peering out at them, but nothing happened. He missed Kitt's ability to track people inside of buildings. No phone calls had been made, and the bugs that he and Frohike had planted hadn't registered anything except the clatter of plates for dinner, some small talk, the chatter of the TV, and now Shostakovich 5.

 

Frohike closed his eyes, clearly enjoying the music for a moment. “At least she’s got good taste," he said.

 

Michael turned back to the screen and had to fight to keep from tuning out as he watched the never changing picture in front of him. Just as he realized his eyes had glazed over again, Frohike looked up and pulled the headphones away from his ears a bit. "CD's skipping," he said, looking at Michael. Then he dropped his gaze to the little TV monitor. After a moment he said," Still skipping."

 

"Maybe she fell asleep," Michael said, suddenly alert with adrenaline.

 

They waited a few minutes. "It's still skipping."

 

"Come on," Michael said, checking for headlights on the street before quietly pulling open the side door of the van and slipping out. Frohike pitched his headphones and crept out with him. They slunk across the lawn, Frohike's size serving him better than Michael's. They each took a different side of the picture window in front and peered in around the edge of the blinds.

 

"See anything?" Frohike hissed.

 

Michael shook his head and lifted his eyes up over the bottom edge of the sill again for a better look. "There's no one watching TV."

 

"Maybe they just went up to bed without turning it off." It was possible. Michael glanced at the garage. They had been following David Martin all day and his wife had gotten home first. They had assumed that her car was in the garage, but they hadn't seen it.

 

"Come on." They ducked out of the bushes in front of the house and followed the walkway to the edge of the garage. Michael peered in.

 

"Damn it! One car."

 

"What are you thinking?"

 

"I think he made us this morning. Maybe that’s part of the reason he’s spooked. He probably figured we’d stay on him so he had his wife go out to get clear of us. When she came home, he had her park her car a few blocks away. They waited for it to get dark, put on the TV and some music and slipped out the back."

 

"There's only one way to find out."

 

They hurried to the back door, popped the lock again and went inside. After a stealthy, cursory check of the downstairs they headed upstairs to find nothing but empty rooms.

 

"Slippery bastards," Frohike said, giving him a look. “They probably have at least an hour head start on us.”

 

"Yeah. Let's see if there's anything here worth finding," he said, opening a drawer.

 

 

*          *          *

 

Kitt was putting his reconnected systems to good use, scanning as far and wide as he could. They were quickly approaching the run down dock yard with its stacks and stacks of beat up containers, rusting cranes, and dimmer than necessary lights. Yves was staring out his windshield, her eyes dilated and scanning back and forth, aware, alert, and wary.

 

“Are you picking up anything?” she asked quietly as she stared out into the dark.

 

“Nothing unusual … yet. All the metal shipping containers make it a little more difficult.”

 

She let out a low sigh. “Let me know if you find anything.”

 

Yves was driving. She had been something of an aggressive driver out on the open highway and through the city, but now that they were closer to their target location, she had slowed down considerably and was taking turn after turn carefully.

 

They passed a chain link fence that marked the beginning of private property. “Yves, according to my information, this dock is owned by British Holdings.”

 

“Yes, it’s one of my father’s front companies,” she said. “He has half a dozen ‘holding corporations’ to launder his money.”

 

“I see. And I believe I have our targets on my scanners.”

 

Yves sat up straighter in the seat and peered out into the night. “Where?”

 

“There are four men near the edge of the water. They have what look like six of the nuclear devices with them.”

 

“Can you tell if they’re the real weapons?”

 

“Based on my preliminary scans, I believe so. They have the right internal structures and I’m detecting faint indications of radioactivity.”

 

She took in a deep breath. “I assume the men are armed.”

 

“To the teeth. But I do have some good news.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“There are only two snipers and they’re on the top of a stack of freight containers in front of the water.”

 

There was the slightest hint of a smile at the corner of Yves’ mouth. “If that’s your idea of good news, then I’d hate to hear the bad.”

 

Kitt had to concede that point. “It’s good news because they’re both shooting from the same direction, so I can give you cover. As long as you stay close to the car, they won’t be able to hit you.”

 

“I assume they’re outside the range of my stun gun?”

 

“I’m afraid so, yes. It’ll make getting those weapons in the car rather difficult, but it is still possible.”

 

Yves nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose so.”

 

They came around the last corner, approaching the inky water of the Hudson and Kitt felt more than his usual sense of trepidation. He always worried when Michael was going to walk into a situation like this, but he was confident in Michael’s skills. He knew that Michael was very adept at taking care of himself. He knew almost nothing about Yves, and she knew very little about him. He had underestimated the value of working with a partner who knew his most likely course of action and all of his abilities. He and Michael worked as a well-oil machine. Yves was an entirely unknown quantity.

 

As they came around the last turn, four men came into view, their weapons trained on Kitt’s slowly advancing form. Yves brought the car to a stop in front of them, and then he turned off all of his lights to make it appear that the car was normal – under Yves’ complete control. Yves pulled the gun from the holster on the passenger side, and opened the door.

 

“Be careful,” he said softly.

 

She gave him a look and then slowly got out of the car with the gun held loosely at her side.

 

“Put the weapon down,” one of the men yelled. Kitt matched his features to those of Nolan Cook.

 

“It is down. And unless you’d like to lower yours as well, that’s as far as I’m willing to go.” She was standing with her shoulders square, giving a rather convincing portrayal of confidence. Kitt could read her vitals, so he knew otherwise, but he expected that the men surrounding them would be convinced.

 

Cook laughed. “Fair enough. That the car?” he asked, gesturing with the business end of his gun.

 

“Yes. Where are the weapons?”

 

He ran a scruffy hand over his beard and pulled a tarp off a stack of rounded canisters. “Right here.”

 

Yves eyed them and then took a step closer.

 

The man swung his gun back on her. “I want to see the merchandise first.”

 

“It’s right there,” she said, tilting her head toward Kitt.

 

“I want to see it in action.”

 

Yves smirked. “Do you honestly think that I’d be able to control it? Everything’s disabled.”

 

“Then how’s the Boss going to control it?”

 

“That’s his problem, now isn’t it?” Yves shot back. “Once he has it safely back in England he’ll have plenty of time to hire a few experts to look it over. But if you’d like to take a look at the dash, you’ll see this is the car.”

 

Cook eyed her warily and then gestured to the others to keep their guns on her as he cautiously approached. The gunmen were distracted, keeping as much of an eye on Kitt as they were on Yves. As Kitt watched, Yves slipped back a bit, slowly moving into position. Cook approached him and peered through his windows. Then he went to open the door and froze as his hand felt the dangerous rumble of the car’s engines through the door. His eyes went wide. “Hey! It’s –“ was all he got out before Yves pressed the button on her stun gun.

 

Kitt shut off his microphones momentarily and shot forward as the four men around them collapsed to the ground. It only took a second for the snipers to start their volleys. Yves dove to the ground and Kitt screeched to a halt between her and the snipers. Bullets rained around them and screeched off his skin. “Yves, you’re covered. Get the weapons.” He popped the door on her side. “Put them in back, we’ll switch them to the trunk later.”

 

Staying low on her knees, Yves hefted the first canister into the car. Kitt watched nervously as she grabbed the next. “The snipers are on the move, hurry Yves,” he said, wishing he could help in some way. She pushed the canister in and went for the next one. A bullet skidded under his chassis and ricocheted off the ground, nicking one of the canisters still in the pile. Yves froze, staring at it with wide eyes.

 

“It’s intact. Hurry.”

 

It took Yves a few more moments to move the other weapons into the car. One of the snipers was running across the darkened ground toward Yves. She hoisted the last canister into her arms and flew into the passenger seat. Kitt closed the door behind her. She carefully set the last canister in back and then lithely crawled across the center console into the driver’s seat. Kitt was already in motion, hurtling past the prone bodies of Phillip Runtz’s men. More bullets bounced harmlessly off his skin, leaving trails of rust colored char in their wake.

 

Kitt barreled past the main gate and disappeared into the safety of the dark night.

 

*          *          *

 

Michael was sitting in one of the chairs in the semi's office section as Bonnie's fingers clicked over the keyboard and Devon peered birdlike over her shoulder. They hadn’t found much of use in Martin’s home and checking out the hotels in the area had been a dead end, which left them with Linda Parker’s appointment book as their only lead.

 

"I'm not seeing anything that looks promising," Bonnie said.

 

"There's got to be something. Martin said the usual place. Hopefully it’s the place where he met Linda."

 

Bonnie just shook her head. "Other than the obvious places like Maricrafters and her home, I can’t find anything to suggest another specific location."

 

"The guys split up and they're watching both places, but frankly, I think both are long shots. It’s not a good intelligence move to meet in a place where people know you,” Michael explained.

 

"Then I don't know what to tell you. I don't see anything in Martin’s or Linda's file that overlaps. Nothing that would suggest a common area for a brush contact or a meeting of any kind."

 

"There's got to be something. It all fits. There's an established connection between the British and the Chinese that connects back to Linda. Martin’s been meeting with the arrested attaché in the consulate, and his initials are in her little black book."

 

Michael had been staring at the book, but he couldn’t make any sense of it. It was just a jumble of initials penciled in on different days. Sometimes there were other digits and numbers. Occasionally there were whole blocks of other initials and numbers. It looked like they were catalogues of deliveries or something. He wished for the hundredth time that Kitt were there. He loved to cipher through these types of puzzles.

 

"Maybe a fresh set of eyes?" Devon suggested, indicating the book.

 

"Be my guest." Michael handed it to him and was suddenly left with nothing to do but ponder the empty service bay behind them. "I'm going to make some coffee," he said, just to do something, to have an excuse not to stare at the empty space where his partner should have been. He sighed heavily in the kitchen and took his time returning. The guys would call him if anything happened. They only had a few hours to catch up to Martin if they were going to find him before he either left the country or turned up dead. Devon had had the local police put out an APB on him, but Michael was starting to get twitchy.

 

He grabbed a trio of mugs along with the sugar and creamer. He came back for the pot and one of Devon's woven trivets to put on the table. Devon was still eyeing the book.

 

"There are a lot of initials with a second letter M," he said thoughtfully.

 

"Yeah, I noticed that. I don't know if some of her contacts were related or if it's just a common initial. Maybe the IRA is involved somehow and they're all McDonalds, McPhees, and McGinnises."

 

"McDonald is Scottish," Devon said dryly

 

"M is also not in the name 'Lee Harvey Oswald,’" Michael observed.

 

"So there's still no direct connection between Yves Harlow and Linda," Bonnie said with a sigh.

 

"Did you come up with anything else on our mystery woman?" Michael asked.

 

"No, but it's hard to search on a picture without a real name. There are too many separate small photo databases and their facial recognition software is primitive," she said softly.

 

"Kitt's isn't," Michael said.

 

Bonnie sighed. "Kitt has the ability to look through hundreds of thousands of false matches and use his reasoning skills to narrow them down. It would take a human months to do it and it’s too difficult a task for a normal computer."

 

They sat in silence a while as Devon ruffled through the pages. "And what about this?” Devon asked, indicating a week in which there were two sets of different initials penned into each date.

 

"A busy week maybe?" Michael shrugged. He'd been staring at it too long and hadn't been able to make any sense of it.

 

"You know, when I was spying in occupied France, we never met with anyone but our handlers. It was too dangerous."   He flipped through the book again. "For most of the book the groups of numbers and initials appear with the initials DM. But about two months ago, DM disappears and there are just groups of numbers combined with the same group of initials that had previously appeared along with DM. Perhaps they aren’t really initials. Maybe they mean something else and she stopped using DM because she wasn’t meeting with anyone other than him. It would be redundant to keep identifying him,” Devon said. “So what do they mean?”

 

"Places?" Michael asked with a raised eyebrow. He swung his chair around so that he could look at the book.

 

"Memorial," Bonnie said suddenly. "What are the initials where the second letter is M?"

 

"In addition to DM, there’s JM, LM, and WM," Michael said.

 

"Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and Washington Monument," she said.

 

"You could be right," Devon said. "The other two are AC and SI."

 

"Smithsonian Institute?" Bonnie suggested.

 

"AC could be Arlington Cemetery. It's missing the N for National, but she may have been keeping it to two letters,” Devon added.

 

They all looked at each other.

 

"They’re all tourist places with a lot of people. Two people meeting there would probably go unnoticed," Bonnie said.

 

"So which one would David Martin use with his contact?" Michael asked aloud.

 

“There is a meeting set up for tomorrow. Maybe he’d keep the same meeting location,” Devon said. “It’s listed as LM.’

 

“Lincoln Memorial,” Michael said, picking up the phone.

 

*          *          *

 

They approached the headquarters of the Department of Energy from the mall side. Kitt analyzed the building security and determined that he could record a loop of video to play back on the external security cameras, allowing him to approach the building’s loading dock. The guards only made rounds once an hour so they had time between patrols. They had stopped back at the garage and Yves had very carefully and painstakingly clipped the wires on all the backup batteries in the suitcase nukes. Kitt had suggested she rest, but Yves wanted to be rid of the weapons as soon as possible.

 

Kitt watched the guards perform their rounds like clockwork. As soon as they drove the truck back into the underground garage, he started looping the video feed. The dock was deserted and Kitt deactivated the alarms and engaged the garage door as they approached. Yves jumped out and sprang up onto the semi loading ramp. She disappeared inside and returned with a cart. One by one she carefully hoisted the weapons onto the ramp and stacked them gently on the cart.

 

“Yves, my sensors indicate that there are very few people around. I’ll loop the video feed as you move through the building. I’ll also unlock each of the doors you come to. Remember you have one hour until the guards do their next set of rounds.” They had mapped out the best path on the drive over. Yves had an infrared proximity detector that she would use to avoid detection in the building. It could sense people 15 to 20 feet away. She also had her ultrasonic stun gun which Kitt could detect from a distance. They had agreed to use it as a signal in case she got in trouble. Kitt would have felt better if she had had a comlink, but there was only one in existence and it was, in all likelihood, still strapped to Michael’s wrist. They would have to make do with the devices and capabilities that Yves had.

 

Yves settled the last of the canisters on the cart, covered them with a tarp, and with a wave, disappeared into the building. Kitt switched to his infrared sensors to follow her.

 

*          *          *

 

Yves tried to move efficiently without looking hurried or out of the place. She passed a couple of people in the hallway but kept her eyes forward and no one stopped to say anything. She was relieved that in each case, the proximity detector in her pocket buzzed a warning.

 

The cinderblock hallways were gray and stark but she knew she was on the right track when she came to a hallway that was wood-paneled and filled with portraits of previous Secretaries. One hundred feet down there was a door that read, “Office of the Secretary of Energy.” Yves paused in front of it before hearing a gentle click. She said a silent thank you to her partner and slipped inside, pulling the cart behind her. The office was warm and spacious with three desks occupying the outer vestibule. There was a glass door leading to the Secretary’s office. Again, Yves waited for the click. Then she pushed the cart through. She paused long enough to notice the incredible view of the Washington skyline before beginning to unload her cargo. She lined up 5 of the canisters along one wall of the office. Then she set one down in the secretary’s sturdy leather chair. She pulled out a Happy Birthday card - “Hope it’s a blast!” – and set it on the desk with her gloved hand.

 

Yves took two seconds to admire her handiwork when she heard movement in the vestibule and the proximity detector in her pocket buzzed. Her first instinct was to duck behind the oversized desk, but she didn’t want to lead anyone to the canisters. She fumbled for the stun gun in her bag just as a woman came through the door into the office and froze. Then she darted out into the vestibule. Yves bolted after her, finally grabbing the stun gun and activating it. She was a hair too late. The woman fell to the floor but there was an ominous red light blinking next to a button under the desk closest to the woman. Silent alarm in all likelihood. Yves pulled the woman under the desk, closed the door to the office and was on her way out when a siren started blaring through the facility and she took off running for the hallway.

 

Yves was afraid she wouldn’t make it back to the dock. She bolted for the nearest exit she could find and flew out the emergency doors. She just hoped Kitt knew where she was. She ran out into the parking lot, but doubled back as she saw headlights approaching - no scanner. She dove into the bushes surrounding the building and waited.

 

Kitt knew Yves was in trouble even before she activated the sonic alarm. He hacked into the secure channels and created an announcement that said, “Intruder on the south perimeter,” hoping it would create enough confusion and split the security response, but the woman who had interrupted Yves had activated an alarm specific to the Secretary’s office so the majority of the security detail was headed that direction. Kitt put the car into gear and rushed toward Yves’ most likely escape route. He cursed the fact that he didn’t have a comlink to tell her where to go. He watched her on his sensors as she barreled out of the building near at least 3 security vehicles. Kitt raced her direction.

 

*          *          *

 

Yves had been spotted. Six security guards were training their pistols at her. A large man with a booming voice said, “Come out with your hands up!”

 

She looked down at her stun gun, cursing the fact that it was only good for one shot.

 

Yves took a deep breath as the guards slowly started advancing on her position. She just had to hold out until Kitt could get there. She closed her eyes and listened. She was sure she could hear screeching tires and a whirring engine. Just as the guards were within ten feet of her, Kitt burst in between her and the guards. The passenger door flung open, the guards opened fire, and Yves dove into Kitt’s cabin. They were on the move before she was in the seat or the door was closed.

 

Kitt careened back through the parking lot as the guards scrambled into their trucks. He turned onto Independence Drive and accelerated to escape the vehicles pursuing him. His scanners picked up a delivery truck just before it pulled out in front of him at the first intersection. Kitt didn’t have time to tell Yves to hang on as he activated turbo boost. Kitt sailed over the top of the truck.

 

“Are you okay?” he asked after they landed, somewhat jaggedly on the other side.

 

“I will be,” she said, eyes wide.

 

“Hang on,” he said as he made a quick left and then a right. The security vehicles had been stopped behind the truck, but two of them had turned around and were attempting to pursue him. Kitt took random turns until the last of the security vehicles gave up. Kitt slowed to a normal speed and routed them back toward the garage.

 

“Thank you, Kitt,” Yves said.

 

“You’re welcome Yves. Good job.”

 

“That was close,” she said, finally allowing herself to breathe.

 

“That is why I like to have better communications with Michael. Next time you need to borrow me, Yves, please let me know ahead of time so you can borrow a comlink as well.”

 

“I’m honored that you’re not opposed to being borrowed again, Kitt.”

 

“Let’s just say it would be open for discussion.”

 

*          *          *

 

When they finally arrived, the garage was a welcomed sight. Kitt was excited to be heading back to the Foundation and Michael.

 

“Yves,” he said. “While I didn’t appreciate being stolen, I do have to say it was an honor working with you. Thank you for trusting me to be a full partner in this endeavor.”

 

“Thank you, Kitt, for trusting me. And for helping me secure the canisters. They would have been disastrous in my father’s hands.”

 

“Of course, Yves. It was my pleasure.”

 

“I’m going to miss you.” Yves was smiling at him fondly, but there was that familiar hollowness to her voice that made Kitt suddenly wary.

 

“I’ll miss you too,” he said. She smiled very sadly. It set him even more on edge and he quietly locked down.

 

“I imagine your friends will be happy to see you again,” she said coming closer to him. It was then that he realized that she had a field dampener in a bag she had picked up from the work bench. It must have been what she’d used to kidnap him in the first place.

 

“Yves, what are you doing?”

 

“What do you mean, Kitt?” she said, trying to keep her voice light.

 

“What are you doing with _that thing_?” His engine started up. “Yves?”

“I’m sorry, Kitt. But I can’t have you knowing about me. You know too much.”

 

“You’re going to erase my memories, aren’t you?”

 

She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I have to.”

 

“Yves, I won’t tell a soul about you. You have my word on that.”

 

She sighed, wishing she didn’t have to do this. She liked him. He was not at all what she had been expecting when she stole him from the Foundation. He had all too quickly wormed his way in, softened her up, and made her care, but she couldn’t let him leave knowing all that he knew. “Kitt, I believe you mean that, but you’re at the mercy of the people who maintain you. And they’re going to want to know what happened to you and who stole you.”

 

“I have ways of keeping certain memories off limits. I even have ways of doing it that would prevent anyone from even knowing they’re there. The people who care for me have allowed me my share of personal space. They don’t violate it.”

 

“I’m sorry, Kitt.   I can trust you, but I can’t trust them.”

 

“Yves, I am my memories. Everyone I meet, every interaction I have, creates changes in my program. Each person creates ripples that have effects on me that can’t just be removed by wiping my memories.”

 

She stared down at the car, uncertain.

 

“I’m different for having known you, Yves. I’m better for having known you.” He paused and went on softly. “I have nothing but my own person. I consider it a violation to have the sanctity of that removed.”

 

She sighed heavily. For some reason she felt herself choking up a bit. “I can’t risk letting someone find out about me.”

 

“You won’t. I promise you that nothing you’ve revealed to me will go any further. You trusted me to help you get the weapons and I did. I didn’t reveal our location or contact my friends, even though I wanted to. You can trust me, Yves. I have no reason to reveal your identity.”

 

She crossed her arms slowly, wishing she could believe him.

 

“Yves, you know from the Foundation’s information that I can’t kill a human being.”

 

She nodded.

 

“And you’ve said that after having double crossed your father like this, it’s very likely he will try to have you killed. By the very nature of my programming, by all that I am, I can’t reveal who you are. And I promise you that if I thought someone was going to get close to that information, I would wipe these memories myself.”

 

She looked at him skeptically. “You have that ability?”

 

“Yes. I’ve never used it because I’ve always felt that even painful memories are part of who I am. Human beings don’t have the capability of forgetting selectively, so I don’t chose to use it either. But if your secret was going to be accessed or if someone was going to use the information I have in order to find you, I would delete it without hesitation.”

 

She knew she was going to have to go further underground than she normally did after this particular double cross of her father’s organization. The idea that she could possibly have someone to call if she got in over her head, someone with Kitt’s abilities, was very seductive. Hell, Kitt was very seductive.

 

She set the bag with the dampener aside. “Okay, Kitt. I’ll trust you.”

 

“Thank you, Yves,” he said sounding very relieved.

 

*          *          *

 

Michael turned slowly, surveying his region of the Mall, his eyes scanning for David Martin. If they didn’t find Martin here today, he was likely out of the country and gone. It would be very difficult to catch him. The Mall was humming and bustling with people of all shapes, sizes, and nationalities. Michael was worried they weren’t going to see their target among all the tourists. There wasn’t much room for error.

 

His earpiece buzzed as Frohike said, “Com check.”

 

“Yeah, I can hear you, Frohike,” he answered. One by one, the other guys checked in as well. They had spread out across the Mall, each with their own region to patrol. Michael was standing at the bottom of the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, having argued that he was the only professional in the group. Langly was by the reflecting pool. Frohike and Jimmy were in the bus. Byers was by the Korean War Memorial.

 

“Everybody clear?” Frohike asked.

 

Michael pressed the transmit key on the radio that Frohike had given him. “Yeah. No sign of him.”  

 

The other guys called in all clear except for Byers.

 

“Byers? You got something?” Frohike asked.

 

There was silence across the radio. Michael immediately started walking up the steps so he could get a better vantage point to see where Byers was. Before he got to the top, the radio crackled.

 

“I’ve spotted Martin,” Byers said. “He walked right past me so I didn’t want to chime in.”

 

Michael continued up the steps. “Where is he?” he asked, taking surreptitious glances at the mall below him. No one seemed out of place or suspicious. When he got to the top, he ducked into the memorial and picked a spot where he could pretend to be reading the inscriptions while still keeping his eyes on the Mall.

 

“He’s in a dark blue suit, carrying a briefcase, heading right for you, Michael,” Byers said.

 

It only took him another second to spot David Martin. As he watched, Martin climbed the steps and sat down at the top. He set the briefcase to his side and Michael guessed their typical arrangement was to pull a switch. His contact would likely have an identical briefcase. The plan was probably to exchange bags, giving Martin tickets in the new one. Michael scanned the crowds, and sure enough, there was a man headed his way, late forties maybe early fifties also in a suit and carrying an identical brief case. Michael moved over to get a little bit closer. He watched as Byers and Langly started to converge toward them.

 

The two men were sitting on the steps now. Michael gave Byers and Langly a minute to get in place. Martin reached down and grabbed the other man’s briefcase and then got up. Michael made his move. He grabbed Martin by the arm, and said, “Excuse me, sir, I think you’ve got the wrong bag.”

 

Martin took off running down the steps. “Byers, Langly, get Martin!” he yelled into the radio. The contact took off in the other direction and was almost to the bottom of the steps when Michael got within reach. He stretched his arm out and yanked on the man’s collar. They both fell down the last set of steps but Michael recovered faster. He reached out to grab the man. The contact swung at him, giving Michael no choice but to swing back. He punched him hard in the jaw and his head reeled back sharply. Michael punched him again and this time the contact doubled over. Snagging a pair of plastic cuffs from his jacket pocket, Michael grabbed his arm, swung him around and quickly put the cuffs on him.

 

“Michael, he’s getting away!” Byers yelled over the radio. Michael looked up in time to see Martin running along the reflecting pool. “Byers, handle this guy. I’ll go after him.” Michael sprinted after Martin, pushing past people and trying to keep sight of Martin as he went. The guy was fast. Too fast. Michael turned it up a notch but he was afraid he was getting away. Michael bobbed past a family with two little kids, taking his eye off Martin in order to not bowl the family over. When he looked up Martin was gone.

 

“Dammit! I lost him!” he yelled into the radio, just as he nearly tripped over a prone man on the ground. He looked down, completely confused when Frohike tapped him on the shoulder.

 

“I got him,” he said, taking out his own pair of cuffs and slapping them on Martin.

 

“How?” Michael gasped, out of breath.

 

Frohike shrugged. “I tripped him.”

 

Michael took a moment to catch his breath. “Nice work.”

 

“You said Devon prepped the authorities?” Frohike asked.

 

“Yeah. Go ahead and call them. They should be expecting us.”

 

Frohike placed the call as Michael pulled the man up. Byers brought Martin over and opened his brief case. Inside were two tickets to Argentina and a wad of cash.

 

“Going somewhere?” Michael asked.

 

*          *          *

 

The authorities had taken Martin and his contact away for questioning and Michael was walking back to the van with the guys, but his mind was a thousand miles away.

 

“Right, Knight?” Frohike asked. He paused when he didn’t get any indication that Michael had heard him. “Michael?” he asked again.

 

Michael gave him a blank look.

 

“What do you think – was Linda working alone with the consulate or was there something bigger at work here?”

 

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. You guys have any other ideas for finding Yves?”

 

Byers looked at him sadly. “It is an artificial intelligence in that car, isn’t it?”

 

Michael looked at him, denial already on his lips but what was the point? He needed their help and now that they had a story and the case was solved, there were no other carrots left to dangle in front of them. “Yeah. How did you know?”

 

“You’ve been stuttering on your pronouns a bit. And you don’t seem interested in getting property back. You seem actually worried.”

 

“You care about that car more than I care about mine,” Jimmy added. “And I care about my car a lot.”

 

Michael sighed. “Yeah, my car is a lot more than a car. _He_ is a partner and friend. And yeah, I’m very worried. If this Yves woman has sold him, I don’t know how we’re going to find him. And I hope she hasn’t done anything to damage him.”

 

“So what’s it like – your AI?” Frohike asked.

 

“He’s like any other person, really. If it weren’t for the car body, you’d have a hard time believing he wasn’t a human being.”

 

“So he has emotions?” Langly asked. “He does more than answer a bunch of questions with pre-programmed answers?”

 

“Oh yeah. Kitt thinks, he reacts, and he has emotions. Like I said, you’d have a hard time believing he wasn’t human if you talked to him on the phone.”

 

“How is that possible? Real AI is years away,” Langly persisted.

 

“You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know how he works, I just know that he does. But you could talk to Bonnie. She’d be happy to brag.”

 

“Wait? Dr. Barstow was responsible for him?”

 

“Yes. There were others involved as well, but she’s worked on him the longest and she had a hand in creating him too.”

 

“A woman after your own heart, Langly,” Frohike cracked.

 

“Shut up.”

 

They reached the bus and Michael was about to suggest they head back to the guys’ place to strategize when Byers gave him another look.

 

“So do you treat him as a human?” he asked and Michael thought he heard something dark or a little bit accusing in his tone.

 

“Yes. He’s not human. He gets electricity and fuel instead of air and food. He’s housed in a car so there’s a lot of things that are different for him, but yeah, I guess we pretty much treat him as a human.”

 

“But he’s not free to make his own choices?” Byers persisted.

 

“Well, in some ways, no. He needs the Foundation to keep him operating. And he has a job to do – which before you ask, no, he doesn’t get paid for. But he’s not a slave – if he didn’t want to do something, no one would force him.” Michael wasn’t being entirely forthcoming about that. He knew what Byers was getting at and he’d worried about those kinds of things himself. He worried about what would happen to Kitt after he was gone. And he knew that Kitt’s well-being depended far too much on the kindness of others.

 

But as long as he had those others in his life, Michael could console himself with the thought that he’d be okay.

 

“You’ll have to forgive Byers. He’s on this AI as slave kick,” Frohike said, waving his hand dismissively.

 

“It’s not an unreasonable fear,” Michael admitted. “But we love Kitt. We think of him as family. Like I said, he’s my partner and I’ve trusted him with my life. Anyone who wants to get at him is going to have to come through me.” Michael paused, remembering the current situation. “And anyone who hurts him is going to have hell to pay.”

 

Byers nodded slowly. “Why don’t we go back to headquarters? We’ll see if we can come up with anything else to help.”

 

*          *          *

 

They drove through the hotel parking lot with lights out. Kitt had even turned off his scanner to avoid being seen. They glided through the dark toward the looming hulk of the semi. Kitt scanned it to be sure it was empty, and then activated the ramp and silently disappeared inside.

 

“Safe and sound,” Yves said quietly before opening the door. “Does it feel good to be home?”

 

“Yes, it does. To be honest, it’s a relief. Not that I didn’t have fun being kidnapped.”

 

Yves nodded slowly. “I suppose it’s time to put this back in,” she said, producing a small black cube from her pocket. Do you have it disabled?”

 

He took a moment to ensure that when the homing beacon was plugged in, it would be inactive. “I wish you’d reconsider. Michael, Devon, and Bonnie can be trusted.”

 

Yves gave him a warning look. “Kitt . . .” she said softly.

 

“It was just a suggestion. I’ve turned the homing beacon off. And I’ll give you an hour head start.” He popped the hood and Yves leaned in and made short work of reinstalling it. She straightened up again. “Well. I guess this is goodbye.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be. I’m sure you would make a wonderful addition to the Foundation.”

 

She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t expect that they’d want to hire a thief. And I work alone anyway.”

 

“Yves, if you ever need help or find yourself in trouble, you can call us. You can call me.”

 

She smiled. “Thank you, Kitt. You’re very sweet.” She leaned down and briefly pressed her lips to his passenger’s side window. To Kitt’s dismay, she left a perfect smear of dark red lipstick. When she backed away from the car he said, “You aren’t going to leave that there, are you?”

 

She grinned mischievously.

 

“But how will I explain that?”

 

“You don’t have to. You don’t remember a thing, remember?”

 

Oh, he was going to take some ribbing for this. But secretly he was a little pleased. No one had ever kissed him before.

 

“Goodbye, Kitt. Take care.”

 

It distressed him to hear the hollow echo in her voice. He wished she’d consider staying, but he had a feeling that no matter how many times he offered, she wouldn’t consider it. She had her own battles to fight. “You take care too, Yves.”

 

He watched as she slowly walked out of the semi, down the ramp. She stopped at the bottom and blew him a kiss before melting into the darkness, leaving him alone in the bright and comforting light of his home.

 

He signaled the ramp to close and started what was going to be a very long 1 hour wait.

 

*          *          *

 

“You’ll be happy to know that David Martin’s contact, a man named Theodore Cameron confessed to Linda Parker’s killing.”

 

“That’s good,” Michael said without much enthusiasm. He was sitting in a chair in Devon’s suite glaring out the window. Yeah, they solved the case, but they were no closer to finding Kitt. And he was out of leads. It was a dead end.

 

“Unfortunately, he’s a hired gun, very professional, and he isn’t talking.”

 

Michael sighed. “Any chance he can be coerced into talking?”

 

“The authorities are working on some sort of angle, but I’m afraid it appears as though he’s willing to go to prison and take the fall for the whole operation, rather than finger anyone higher up.”

 

Michael felt dejected, worried, and frustrated. So they got Linda’s killer, but she wasn’t exactly the person they thought they were helping. And they lost Kitt in the bargain. “Devon, how the hell are we going to find Kitt?”

 

“I don’t know if it’ll help, but I’m looking at satellite photos from the night Kitt disappeared. I managed to get them from a friend of mine in the Defense Department.”

 

He tapped a stack of 8x10 glossies. The top image was an aerial view of the city the night Kitt disappeared.

 

“Here he is leaving,” Devon said gravely.

 

“Devon, those photos are days old!” His frustration was about to boil over. He got up and started pacing. “We have _nothing_ to-“

 

He was interrupted by a beep. He froze, not entirely believing it when his comlink beeped a second time. “Michael?”

 

“KITT! Kitt, is that you, pal?! Where are you?”

 

“I’m in the semi, Michael.”

 

Michael bolted for the door. “Get Bonnie,” he yelled to Devon on his way out into the hallway.

 

Michael waited a second or two at the elevator before deciding the stairs would be faster. He took them two at a time and sprinted through the parking lot. When he came to the semi, he pulled up short, the thought that it could be a trap, that Yves had been in their network and could maybe send signals on their private carrier frequency finally hitting him. He took a deep breath and approached the side door cautiously. Then he pushed it open and slowly peered inside. The silhouette of his partner was tucked in his usual parking spot in the back of the trailer.

 

“Kitt, is that you?” he asked cautiously.

 

“It’s so very good to see you, Michael.” he said.

 

“You all right?” he asked, looking around the semi warily.

 

“I think so, but to be quite honest, I’m not sure.”

 

Michael was in the driver’s seat in a flash. “Where have you been? We were worried sick. _I_ was worried sick.”

 

“I wish I had an answer for you, Michael. But I don’t know myself. I was sitting in the semi, recharging the other night and then suddenly, I was here with my internal clock showing that it’s four days later.”

 

“You’ve been missing for all that time. But don’t worry, pal. We’ll have Bonnie look you over. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

 

“Thank you. This is all a little disconcerting.”

 

Michael gave the dash a pat and then stepped back out to take a look around the semi, deciding that nothing looked too terribly out of place. Then he heard Bonnie and Devon at the door.

 

“Kitt!” A diagnostic wand practically materialized in Bonnie’s hand as she immediately went into Hover Mode.

 

“Kitt, it’s wonderful to have you back,” Devon added with an engaging smile.

 

After several minutes of studying the hieroglyphics on her instrument, Bonnie said, “Well, everything looks okay. Let’s see if there’s anything under the hood.” She lifted the hood and after a few minutes of probing, let out a very frustrated sigh. “Kitt, all of your cabling has been tampered with.” She leaned out from under the hood and gave Michael and Devon a significant stare. “Look at this. The cables from his CPU to his other systems have all been spliced. Kitt, do you have any memory of this?”

 

“No, Bonnie, I’m afraid not. And this is all very disconcerting.”

 

“Don’t worry, Kitt, we’ll figure out what happened.” She turned back to Devon and Michael. “Obviously he was taken, and obviously something was done to him, but the readings all look normal. It looks like whoever did this put everything back together. It’s going to take me a couple of days to go over everything, but right now, it looks like he’s okay.”

 

“Any chance they left behind something nefarious, like a module to take over his CPU?” Devon asked.

 

“That’s one thing I checked. The serial number on the memory module is the last one I installed. But I’ll spend the night looking for anything that might be used against him.”

 

“Can you do anything to get his memories back?” Michael asked, not eager to have another dead end. He wanted to get his hands on whoever had done this to his partner.

 

“It depends on what caused the memory loss in the first place, but I’ll do my best.”

 

Michael moved over to the car, and began looking it over, keeping an eye out for clues. It didn’t take him long to find one. If he had any doubts about who was responsible for Kitt’s disappearance, they were wiped away when he saw the smudge of lipstick on his partner’s window.

 

“Hey guys, I’d say the Gunmen’s intuition that Yves was involved in this was right on,” he said, pointing out the offending mark.

 

Bonnie frowned and Devon raised an eyebrow. “That’s an interesting calling card, wouldn’t you say?”

 

Michael just nodded. “And you have no memory of what happened?” he asked Kitt.

 

“No, Michael.”

 

“Well, I’m with Devon. That is a very interesting calling card.” Michael took a deep breath, relieved to have his partner back and apparently more or less intact. He blew out the air and let himself really smile for the first time in a few days. “Apparently Devon’s a better man than both of us, eh pal?”

 

“Very funny, Michael. I can hardly be held responsible for things I have no recollection of.”

 

“I don’t think that’s a very good excuse, buddy. _I_ certainly wouldn’t be let off the hook with an excuse like that.”

 

“Yes, but you have a history,” Bonnie said sardonically before disappearing back under the hood.

 

*          *          *

 

Byers, Frohike, Langly, and Jimmy crossed the hotel parking lot and Byers hesitated only slightly before knocking on the door in the side of the Foundation’s trailer. It only took a moment for the door to open and Knight to pop his head out.

 

“You are not going to believe the lead we have,” Byers said, excited to be the bearer of good news.”

 

“Yeah,” Langly said, following Byers into the truck. “I …” he stopped, seeing Miles right in front of him. “Came upon some interesting information … from a friend of mine,” he said, avoiding any admission of hacking. “There was apparently a break in at the Department of Energy last night. And get this – they’re looking for an older model black Trans Am. They didn’t get the license plate …”

 

It took him a second to realize that Frohike was tugging at his arm. Langly glanced back at him. Frohike cocked his head toward the rear of the semi. “Oh.” Langly said. “Nevermind. You found it,” he said, staring at the gleaming black car.

 

“Hello, Mr. Car,” Jimmy said.

 

“Kitt,” Michael corrected. “Guys, meet the Knight Industries Two Thousand. And it’s ‘him’.”

 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you under better circumstances,” Kitt said.

 

“The pleasure is all ours, Kitt,” Byers said. “We’re glad you’re okay.”

 

“Where did you find him,” Frohike asked.

 

“He found us,” Knight said.

 

“So, actually, if you could go back to the information you got from ‘your friend’,”Devon deadpanned, “we’d be very interested in knowing where he’s been.”

 

“His memory appears to have been erased,” Michael added.

 

“Uh, apparently there was a break in at the Department of Energy and the suspect was seen fleeing in an older black Trans Am. It didn’t show up on any of the video surveillance cameras and none of the guards got the license plate, but a witness said it jumped over a delivery truck,” Langly said pointedly.

 

“The Department of Energy?” Michael asked. “What would he have been doing there?” He turned to Kitt. “Does that ring any bells, buddy?”

 

“I’m afraid not, Michael.”

 

“Apparently the intruder broke into the Secretary of the Energy’s office and left 6 Soviet era suitcase nukes behind. Apparently they’re part of a trove of weaponry that went missing after the fall of the Soviet Union,” Frohike explained.

 

“I didn’t see anything about it in the news this morning,” Devon said.

 

“And I wouldn’t expect that you would,” Langly quipped. “I’m sure that got immediately classified. If someone can get the nukes in, they could get them out too.”

 

Bonnie extricated herself from under Kitt and quietly picked up a different instrument from a shelving unit. She opened Kitt’s door and after a few seconds, whistled softly.

 

“What is it?” Devon asked.

 

Bonnie ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve spent the entire night going over Kitt with a fine tooth comb and I don’t see any indication that there are any nasty surprises left behind. But there are trace amounts of residual radioactivity in the cabin.”

 

“Apparently you’ve been breaking and entering, pal,” Michael quipped.

 

“This is still all very confusing,” he said.

 

“Any luck with his memories?” Michael asked.

 

Bonnie shook her head. “It’s almost like they never existed. I can’t find any trace of what happened to him the last 4 days. I’m afraid we may never know.”

 

The group was quiet for a moment. Then Byers stepped toward Kitt and said, “Since we’ve now been introduced, would you mind if we asked you some questions?”

 

“As long as you promise not to put me in your newspaper,” Kitt said. “I rather like my privacy.”

 

“No, just for personal curiosity,” Byers continued. “What are your thoughts on the rights of non-human sentient beings?”

 

*          *          *

 

“Well, buddy, are you happy to be heading home?” Michael asked, watching the semi pull out of the hotel parking lot in front of them.

 

“Yes, Michael. It’ll be good to be back to more … familiar places,” he said. Not that he didn’t like Washington, but he was hoping things would be back to normal once they got home. He was also hoping Bonnie would stop clucking and Michael and Devon would stop asking about his memories. He didn’t like the weight of the lies he kept having to tell.

 

“I’ll be glad to get home too, pal.”

 

“I thought Bonnie was never going to let me out of the semi.”

 

“She’s just worried about you.” Michael looked down at his voice modulator. “I was worried about you too, pal. And I can’t tell you how much I’ve taken your capabilities and sparkling personality for granted. Stake outs are no fun without you. I’m really glad you’re back, safe and sound.”

 

“Thank you, Michael. I’m sure I must have been worried about you as well.” He waited a beat. “But it’s comforting to know there are people who are worried about me.”

 

“Count on it, Kitt. Count on it.”

 

They rode in silence for a while. “So what’s our ETA?” Michael asked.

 

“Oh no. It is way too early for you to start asking if we’re there yet,” Kitt said.

 

“I can’t help it. It’s a long ride.”

 

“Well, I have just the thing for you,” Kitt said, calling up a section of his memory bank.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“The latest addition of the Lone Gunmen is out.”

 

“I thought you didn’t read ‘rags’ like that.”

 

“I may have changed my mind. For example, did you know that the Air Force has a hanger at Wright Patterson Air Force Base that houses an alien ship?”

 

Michael groaned. It was going to be a long trip.

 

**Epilogue**

 

Kitt was pleased when he saw the nondescript message in the anonymous account he had set up at the behest of an impossible to trace email he’s received that had been signed Daryah Lee Selvow.

 

_Dear Lee,_

_Thank you again so very much for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you. If you ever need anything, you can reach me at this address. Keep in touch._

_XOXO,_

_Daryah_

It wasn’t much of an in, but he would take it. He really did want to help her and hoped that maybe someday she’d be more willing to come out of the shadows.

 

_Dear Daryah,_

_It’s wonderful to hear from you. Please write from time to time to let me know you’re okay. I will continue to monitor this address. Please take care of yourself and know that if you ever need anything, there’s someone out here who cares about you._

_Love,_

_Lee_

He sent the email and wondered if she would smile at the irony of that someone being a computer.

 

\---------------

-knightshade

November 7, 2014


End file.
